Brake Failure

by Alison Brodie

  Glamour. Ruby did not feel the usual dart of jealousy. On the contrary; in less than two months, her life was going to be far more glamorous than Claire’s.

  ‘They’re here,’ she announced, spotting the Audrey/Brendas grinning outside the window. ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow, Mum. There’s something I have to tell you.’

  The three women bustled across the restaurant, sank down on the banquette in a nest of carrier bags and smiled winningly across the table at Claire. ‘A little birdie’s been telling us what a bizzy bee you’ve been,’ one of them began brightly.

  Claire, who was still re-arranging the floral centrepiece, took a long moment to look up and bring the woman into focus. Another moment ticked by, and then she said: ‘What?’

  ‘Vanessa told us you sang Music of the Night.’

  Claire glared at the woman as if they’d just exchanged insults. ‘I was Queen of the Night.’

  Another Audrey/Brenda giggled. ‘I bet you were!’ She wriggled shyly. ‘I’m a bit of a soprano in the shower.’

  Claire winced. ‘Tell me,’ she said pleasantly, ‘have you heard of coloratura?’

  This was a vocal lexicon of trills, runs and staccato that Claire was especially gifted in; but Ruby had an awful feeling these women didn’t know that. The Audrey/Brenda turned to her friend for the answer, ‘You did your kitchen ceiling in that, didn’t you, Brenda?’

  Claire snorted a laugh; and the women blushed, knowing they had somehow embarrassed themselves. Sharing their embarrassment, Ruby swiftly offered them wine, but they refused and, leaving the cheque-book on the table, hurried out.

  Ruby rounded on Claire. ‘Why were you so horrid to them?’

  ‘Because they irritate me to distraction. How can they possibly believe they can become acquainted with me? I don’t even invite Helga Guttenberg to my soirées and she’s had two seminal novels published.’ Claire gave the floral centrepiece a final, decisive tweak and sat back to admire her handiwork. ‘That will be you in two years: a suburban English housewife with the sophistication of a door mat.’

  Ruby shouted a laugh. She didn’t care that everyone stopped eating to stare at her. Confidence was coming at her in tidal waves. She even began to re-arrange the flowers that Claire had so artfully worked on.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Claire kicked Ruby’s shin. ‘I had that perfectly symmetrical. Leave it alone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re acting positively demented!’

  ‘Am I?’ Ruby stuck a petunia behind her ear. Olga, their Russian Nobel prize-winner, who hadn’t smiled all evening, let out a roar of laughter.

  Claire shot her guest a furious look before turning back to Ruby, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘I am curious, Ruby. You still haven’t told me why you wanted this meeting.’

  Time to drop the bomb.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Ruby sipped her Chablis, savouring the moment. ‘I thought you should know. I am going to live in … Paris.’

  Chapter Three

  Hank was six-two with a lean hard-muscled body, but in thirty seconds he was gonna be as fragile as a Barbie doll. The crowd waited silent under the scorching Kansas sun. They wanted to see him win, they wanted to see him ground to pulp. He balanced on the corral fence and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

  The loudspeaker announced him: ‘In the third round we have Hank Gephart. He’s riding Hammer - a bull that kicks high and spins fast.’

  The bull burst into the pen, coming up hard at the gate, horns crashing the bars in fury. As Hank dropped onto the broad back, the animal bellowed, spit foaming at its mouth. This was the second time in four years Hank had ridden Hammer, a Charolais-cross, built like a rock but agile. The animal was a legend with PBRs because nobody had ever stayed on him more than five seconds.

  Hank took a firm grip on the rope, feeling the hard spine beneath him. The gate opened and the bull thundered out into the arena in an explosion of grit and dust. Hank had to stay on for eight seconds to win. The bull dove forward and kicked out its hind legs. Hank clung on to the rope with his right hand, his left hand counter-balancing each violent move, anticipating every buck and jerk. Sweat blinded him, dust clogged his throat. He counted the seconds: one, two, three … A sudden swerve threw him into the air. He landed hard, rolling away from the giant hooves inches from his face. Then he was up, scrabbling to get across the arena to safety. The bull came at him. There was a flash of colour. The clowns were diverting the animal, and Hank ran low and vaulted the fence.

  The crowd applauded half-heartedly. Hank acknowledged them with a wave of his Stetson. He was thirty-seven, too old for this game. As he headed out of the arena, his fellow teamsters slapped him on the back good-naturedly, their hands like planks of wood. He came out of the shade and into bright sunshine and the smell of French fries and cigarettes. He’d have an ice-cold beer, go home, take an Advil and soak his bones in the tub. Then he saw Roxanne. She stood at the bar with a guy twice her age. Even from this distance, Hank could tell he was bad company, a prison tattoo on his forearm saying he didn’t play by the rules.

  Hank was too tired to confront the guy and go through all the macho leave-her-alone crap. He sighed, knowing he’d have to forget his beer.

  ‘Roxanne,’ he called across. ‘Let’s roll.’

  Pretending not to hear, she pushed her beer into the crowd of bottles on the bar. Seemed she wasn’t going to budge. Since ma and pa died, Hank had been a surrogate father to his two brothers and one sister. The boys had never been trouble, but once a girl hit thirteen, she was one big headache. And Roxanne wasn’t getting any easier. She was now sixteen but made herself up to look thirty. Every time he tried talking sense into her, she’d get antsy; treat him like he was the enemy.

  He remembered a time when she was happy with a puppy or a doll. Now she was a woman in skin-tight jeans with long flowing red hair - a beacon to any hot-blooded male. And that was what was worrying Hank right now: the sleaze-ball with the decorated arm hunkering over her like a vulture shielding its kill. Reluctantly Hank changed course. Roxanne was going to accuse him of being a control freak all the way home but she’d never had to go to the morgue and see a young girl’s broken body because of some bad-ass fucker like this guy.

  ‘Hey, buddy.’ Hank saw ZZ Top printed across the guy’s T-shirt, saw the cut upper-lip, the old blood purple and cracked. ‘She’s only sixteen.’

  The guy sneered. ‘So? She’s old enough to play.’

  A hardness was getting into Hank’s back, moving up his spine, and it had nothing to do with bull-riding. He turned to his sister. ‘Roxanne, we’re leaving.’

  ‘I don’t wanna.’

  He held her gaze, his look telling her he didn’t want this bullshit. She was about to capitulate but the guy muscled in, chin jutted. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’m her brother. And she’s going home’

  ‘You sound like a fuckin’ cop.’

  Hank stayed silent. You didn’t broadcast something like that to someone like him. He turned to Roxanne. ‘Let’s go.’

  The man planted a heavy hand on Hank’s shoulder: ‘Leave her be.’

  Hank stared at the guy, his eyes promising all the pain he would do to him.

  Doubt flickered over the guy’s face then he flung his hand away like Hank was dirt and swung back to the bar. ‘Asshole.’

  Hank took Roxanne by the elbow and marched her to the truck. ‘We were just talking,’ she whined. Hank ached for the little girl who used to run down the path every day to greet him, waving a drawing of him: a stick figure in a Stetson hat riding a flying pig with horns. He sighed. That little girl was gone, forever.

  They reached the truck. Once, the bodywork had been red before the sun bleached it to pink. Hank lowered the tailgate, waited for Rex to crawl out from the shade of the cottonwood tree then lifted him up and in. ‘Good boy.’ Hank jammed the water bowl inside a coil of rope. Rex was a greyhound, too old to be raced, but Hank had gotten to him before he’d been tied in a sack
and dumped in the reservoir.

  ‘I’m sick of you treating me like a kid,’ Roxanne bleated from the front seat. ‘There was nothing wrong with the guy. We were talking about ice-cream for Christ’s sake!’

  Hank stared at her narrow back; saw how the bracelets caught the sunlight as the slim arms thrashed the air in a one-sided argument. He shut the tailgate, raised his Stetson to wipe the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. He just wished some guy - a doctor, a teacher, even a county brownie - would marry her and take her off his hands.

  For him, marriage was definitely off the books. He’d been a father-figure for most of his adult life and once Tom and Pete were at College - and Roxanne hooked up with someone who hadn’t seen the four walls of a penitentiary - he would be unattached.

  And free.

  Chapter Four

  Chronic cystitis?

  Urinary tract fistula?

  Kidney cancer?

  Ruby stood at the altar, desperate for a pee. What’s wrong with me? she mentally wailed. She’d gone to the loo only forty minutes ago, yet now felt she could piss like an elephant.

  The vicar droned on. ‘Do you, Ruby Thompson, take Edward Mortimer-Smyth to be your lawful wedded husband?’

  Yes! Yes! Yes! For God’s sake, YES!

  ‘I do.’ Ruby clenched muscles she didn’t know she had.

  ‘Do you, Edward Mortimer-Smyth, take Ruby Thompson to be your lawful wedded wife?’

  Ruby had to shake off the image of urine trickling down the altar steps and think of something else. She was going to Paris! In thirty days. Happily, she pictured gaily-painted barge boats on the Seine, cobbled streets and chic mademoiselles with pedigree poodles in gem-encrusted collars. ‘Paris has such a problem with dog poo,’ Claire said last night. Claire was insanely jealous - and it was wonderful!

  Claire sat in the front pew, dressed in the lavender-coloured Salvatore Ferragamo suit she’d been bragging about. On the other side of the aisle, Grandad Jack was dressed in a crumpled suit with a red spotted handkerchief flowing from his pocket. Claire and Grandad detested each other. Claire said he should be de-loused. Grandad said her face could stop a tank.

  Ruby glanced to her right. Edward was watching the vicar intently as if trying to lip-read. She glanced to her left. Sandra - unaccustomed to wearing a dress - especially a Victorian-style dress in frothing “fuschia” - and far from the confines of her laboratory - had the bewildered expression of someone who had just hatched from an egg.

  Ruby was now breathing like a woman in labour, her legs crossed at the thighs. Desperate to take her mind off her agony, she thought of the two people missing from the church. Her mother, who had abandoned her twenty years ago; and her father, who was dead. Ruby never allowed herself to remember because it always gave her that crawling anger, the pain of loss, the bewilderment. Her mother had promised to come back. And her father? Ruby refused to think about him. She wished she was alone with Edward so she could crawl into his lap and feel his comforting arms around her.

  ‘To have and to hold …’ the vicar’s voice plodded on.

  Ruby visualised Aunt Abigail in the back pew, dressed in purple, her moustache caked with makeup. When Ruby was growing up, Aunt Abigail would regularly prophesise: “That child is going to be trouble, mark my words.” “She has the devil in her eyes.”

  How does she feel now that I’ve flown against all her predications? Ruby thought triumphantly. I am a well-balanced individual, free of all vices. I am a St John’s Ambulance volunteer. I know the etiquette for every occasion and I can whip up an elaborate dinner for eight at a moment’s notice. And, in two minutes - unless the vicar drives us all into a coma - I will have a double-barrelled surname.

  ‘You may kiss the bride,’ the vicar announced.

  Ruby threw up her veil. ‘Edward, I need a pee, desperately.’

  Minutes later, with her voluminous skirt hitched above her hips, Ruby hovered over the lavatory seat looking like the toilet-roll cover in Mrs Symmonds-Elliott’s cloakroom.

  Oh, what a relief!

  Then she spotted the precancerous melanoma on her thigh and as she paused to study it, she heard footsteps enter, and Aunt Abigail’s cut-glass voice.

  ‘My brother, Timothy, was professor of English at Cambridge,’ the old lady was saying.

  A woman with an equally cut-glass voice answered. ‘How impressive.’

  Ruby’s ears pricked up. Aunt Abigail was talking about daddy.

  ‘He became involved with one of his students,’ Aunt Abigail continued. ‘Quite bonkers.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘His student! She was pregnant when she moved in with him, but they never married. She deserted the family when Ruby was seven.’ Aunt Abigail’s voice dropped to a malicious whisper: ‘But what Ruby doesn’t know is-’ She stopped at the sound of the door opening.

  Footsteps entered. Voices chattered. Loos flushed then there was silence. Ruby emerged, mystified. She caught up with her aunt in the corridor. ‘I just heard you. What did you mean: “What Ruby doesn’t know”?’

  ‘Yfgreenou shouldn’t eavesdrop, Ruby. Frightfully common.’

  Ruby balled her hands at her sides, waiting for an answer.

  Her aunt heaved a sigh and glanced to the ceiling as if seeking an audience for this display of ill-manners. ‘You have always been compunctious, even as a child.’

  ‘Please answer my question.’

  ‘I really can’t remember what I was saying.’ She saw Ruby’s expression. ‘May I remind you, Ruby, that I am here as your guest? Yet I fear I am being harassed.’

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake.’ Ruby marched into the reception room to where Vanessa stood at the buffet table selecting finger-size sandwiches. ‘I just overheard Aunt Abigail talking about mum and dad, and she said, “What Ruby doesn’t know is-” What does she mean by that?’

  Vanessa glanced back over her shoulder. ‘She’s just a cranky old bat who likes to make mischief. Don’t ever believe a word she tells you.’

  *

  The wedding cake had been cut, the toasts made, the photographs taken. Now the guests stood about in clusters drinking and chatting. Ruby thanked Vanessa for a wonderful wedding and hugged her tight; but the hug was not only thanks for the wedding but also for twenty years of constant love. Ruby wasn’t surprised when Vanessa stiffened within her embrace; her step-mother didn’t like displays of affection.

  ‘You’ve been the best mum in the world,’ Ruby whispered.

  Vanessa patted her arm. ‘And you’ve been the best daughter.’ She glanced across the room to where Claire was sipping champagne as if it was caustic acid, her expression barely concealing her anger. ‘Oh, dear, Claire seems to be working herself into a tantrum. It has always been her dream to live in Paris. I’d better go and cheer her up.’

  Ruby watched her go. Right from the start, Vanessa had encouraged her to become another Claire: confident and cultured. Claire, who was Head Girl at school, was academically superior. She could speak French, sing in German and knew the difference between Pieter Bruegel and Jan Bruegel. For twenty years, Ruby had struggled to compete. Now, Paris – in one sweep – had given her the ultimate victory.

  She gazed warmly at Edward. He had made it happen. He was talking to his mother, Charlotte. They had the same pale freckled complexion with sandy, almost ginger, hair. Edward wasn’t handsome, Ruby decided, but he was loving and thoughtful, and she felt totally comfortable with him. They never argued, and congratulated themselves on being like-minded. Passion was not to be trusted, they told themselves. True love was like a pair of warm sheepskin slippers that you long to come home to.

  Edward had been seven when he’d been sent to a strict boarding school on the Yorkshire moors. The experience had not toughened him up as the brochure had promised; instead it had left him emotionally fragile. Although the school had a Stiff-Upper-Lip philosophy, Ruby presumed it also had a leaning towards telekinetics because its motto was: “Open minds open doors.
”

  ‘You look lovely, sweetheart.’ Grandad Jack came up and touched Ruby’s cheek. He smelled of Old Holborn and medicinal soap; he smelled of Grandad. He had shaved himself badly, leaving a fuzz of grey bristles under one ear and a razor nick on his chin. ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She kissed the tip of his nose like she always did, and tears sprang to his eyes.

  ‘I never thought you’d turn out like this,’ he snuffled.

  ‘How did you think I’d turn out?’

  ‘Well …’ He whipped out his handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘Let’s just say I was relieved when Vanessa took you under her wing.’

  He sounded so serious, she laughed. Then she remembered: ‘Grandad, you know this Millennium Bug …?

  ‘No! Vanessa gave me strict instructions not to talk about it, especially not to you. But just a word of advice …’ He winked. ‘Keep the veil. Handy for catching trout.’ He walked off, picking up a bottle of beer from the drinks table before stepping through the French windows to join the group of smokers in the garden.

  She watched him go, her chest bursting with love. He’d been the one who’d taken care of her after mum left. Dad made no protest - perhaps Ruby was too much a reminder of the woman who had deserted him.

  Grandad Jack had done his best to be a good parent. Whenever he rolled a cigarette, he would tell her that tobacco killed. Whenever his friends joined them for a game of poker, he would tell them to mind their language. As an anarchist he taught her to distrust policemen and to view the Royal Family as parasites.

  A year later, Ruby’s father married Vanessa, who had a stately home, a collection of King George Coronation plates, a copy of Burke’s Peerage and a petulant daughter with Royal Schools of Music grade one piano. Vanessa, after a quiet word with Grandad, transferred Ruby to her new home, Tewkesbury Manor, and enrolled her in an elite academy for girls. Its motto: “Always Just”.