In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  Gloria also needed her Luckies, nylons, lipstick, rouge and scented soap. She drank too much, so needed a source for whisky, too, and she also took to chewing gum, which she insisted on chewing in church, just to annoy Betty Goodall. And PX, of course, would get her all these things at the flutter of an eyelash. Whether she ever granted him any favours in exchange, I can’t say for certain, but I doubt it. Whatever she was, Gloria was never a whore, and I couldn’t imagine PX actually being with a woman in that way. He looked even younger and seemed even shyer and more awkward than me. There was some health reason that prevented him from serving in a more active branch of the forces—after all, he looked young and strong enough for combat—but he never told anyone exactly what it was.

  PX did little favours for us all—for me, Cynthia, Alice, even Mother—especially when it came to nylons and make-up. One thing I soon started to wonder about was why the American forces, undoubtedly male as they were for the most part, had storage-rooms full of women’s underwear and cosmetics. It was either intended to endear them to the local women, or they had certain private proclivities that they managed to hide from the rest of the world.

  Anyway, lucky for us, PX> seemed willing and able to get hold of just about anything we needed. If we bemoaned the lack of decent meat, for example, he would produce bacon and on occasion, even a piece of beef. Once he even, miracle of miracles, came up with some oranges! I hadn’t seen an orange in years.

  I don’t think his empire was limited to the contents of the Rowan Woods PX, either. Sometimes, when he got a weekend pass, he would disappear mysteriously for the entire time. He never said where he went or why, but I suspected he had a few dealings with the Leeds black market. I think I rather liked him, even though he seemed so young, and I might have gone out with him if he had asked me. But he never did, and I was too shy to ask him. We were only together in a group. Besides, I know he preferred Gloria.

  Billy Joe had other uses, too. He was essentially an aeroplane mechanic, but he could also fix anything on wheels. That came in useful when our little Morris van gave up the ghost. Billy Joe came down in the evening, with PX and a couple of others tagging along, fixed it in a jiffy, then the whole gang of us picked up Gloria and went to the Shoulder of Mutton for a drink. A curious incident occurred that night that coloured my view of Billy Joe for some time to come.

  They were the only Americans in the pub and we were the only women. In addition to getting us plenty of suspicious and disapproving glances, even from people I had known for years and served in the shop, this also drew a few loud and pointed comments. Most of the men there were either too old to go to war or were excused because of health reasons. Some were in reserved occupations.

  “Just think about it, Bert,” said one local as we bought our first drinks. “Our lads are over there fighting the Nazis, and them damn Yanks are over here sniffing around our women like tomcats in heat.”

  We ignored them, took a table in a quiet corner and kept to ourselves.

  The next time we were ready for drinks, Billy Joe went to the bar. He was drinking pints of watery beer, and I had told him to hold onto his glass because there was a shortage. A lot of locals took their own, and some even used jamjars, but if you got one early in the evening you had to hold onto it for the night.

  As he was on his way back, one of the local strapping farm lads who hadn’t been called up—something to do with an allergy to tinned food, I think—called out after him:

  “Hey, Yank. Tha’s ta’en me glass.”

  Billy Joe tried to ignore him, but the man, Seth his name was, had drunk enough to make him feel brave. He lumbered over from the bar and stood right behind Billy Joe back at the table. The place went quiet.

  “I said that’s my glass tha’s got tha beer in, Yank.”

  Billy Joe put the tray down on the table, glanced at the pint glass and shrugged. “Same one I’ve had all evening, sir,” he said in that lazy Southern drawl.

  “Same one I’ve had all evening, sir.” Seth tried to mock him, but it didn’t come out right. “Well it’s mine, sithee.”

  Billy Joe picked up his glass of beer, turned to face Seth slowly and shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir.”

  Seth thrust his chin forward. “Well, I bloody do. Gimme it back.”

  “You sure, sir?”

  “Aye, Yank.”

  Billy Joe nodded in that slow way of his, then he poured the beer all over Seth’s feet and held out the glass to him. “You can take the glass,” he said. “But the beer was mine. I paid for it. And, by the way, sir, ah am not a Yankee.”

  Even Seth’s friends had started to laugh by now. It was that sort of fulcrum moment, when so much hangs in the balance, just the lightest touch the wrong way sends it all tumbling down. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast.

  Seth made the wrong move. He stepped back and raised his fist. But he was slow. Billy Joe might have had that exaggerated sort of lazy grace, but his speed amazed me. Before anyone knew what had happened, there was the sound of breaking glass and Seth was on his knees, screaming, hands over his face, blood gushing out between his fingers.

  “Ah am not a Yankee, sir,” Billy Joe repeated, then turned his back and sat down. The mood had soured, nobody wanted anything more to drink, and we all left shortly afterwards.

  Vivian Elmsley got up at about one o’clock, turned on the bedside light and took a sleeping pill. She didn’t like them, didn’t like the way they made her feel woolly-minded the next morning, but this was getting ridiculous. They said old people didn’t need as much sleep, but lying tossing and turning all night imagining someone scratching at the window or tapping at the door was exhausting. It was probably the wind, she told herself as she turned off the light and settled back on the pillows.

  But there was no wind.

  Slowly, the chemical Morpheus insinuated its way into her system. She felt sluggish, her blood heavy as lead, pushing her down into the mattress. Soon she hovered on the threshold between sleep and waking, where thoughts take on the aspect of dreams, and an image you conjure up consciously is suddenly snatched away for unconscious improvisations, like variations on a musical theme.

  At first, she pictured Gloria’s tilted head as she had appeared on the TV screen, the detail from Stanhope’s painting, looking like a cartoon-Gloria.

  Then the cartoon-Gloria started talking about a night in Rio de Janeiro when Vivian had had too much to drink and—the only time—succumbed to sexual advances at a cocktail party in a big hotel, remembered a whispered room number, waited until Ronald was fast asleep and slipped out into the corridor.

  The cartoon-Gloria’s monologue was cut with images of the night, which flicked past jerkily like the series of cards in an old “What the Butler Saw” machine.

  Vivian had always wondered what it would be like. They only did it once. Her lover was a gentle and sensitive woman from the French embassy, conscious it was Vivian’s first time, but ultimately frustrated at her lack of ability to respond. It wasn’t for want of trying, Vivian thought. She couldn’t lose herself in sex with a man, so she had hoped she could abandon herself to the caresses of another woman, enjoy the bliss that writers wrote about and people risked everything for.

  But she couldn’t. It wouldn’t happen.

  Finally, she put on her robe and hurried out, humiliated, back to her own room. Ronald was still snoring away. She lay on her own bed and stared at the dark ceiling, tears welling in her eyes, a dull ache in her loins.

  As the cartoon-Gloria retold the story of Vivian’s failed attempt at sex and infidelity, it was as if the TV camera started to move away from her, and the rest of Gloria came into view, showing more of her figure, and before long Vivian realized that Gloria wasn’t wearing a red dress; she was covered in blood which oozed from cuts deep into the gristle of her flesh.

  Yet she was still talking.

  Talking about something that happened years after her death.

  Vivian tried to stop it, but
she felt as if she were being held down by the weight of her own blood, an anchor hooked deep into the darkness and the horror. Too heavy.

  She struggled to wake, and as she did, the telephone rang. Her bonds were suddenly cut, and she shot up, gasping for air as if she had been drowning.

  Without thinking, she picked up the receiver. A life-line.

  After a short pause, the monotone voice whispered, “Gwen. Gwen Shackleton.”

  “Go away,” she mumbled, her tongue thick and furred.

  The voice laughed. “Soon, Gwen,” he said. “Soon.”

  Eleven

  Banks and Annie drove out to the estate from Millgarth Police HQ. When Annie asked Banks why he always wanted to do the driving himself, he didn’t really know the answer. Being driven was one of the perks of his rank that he had never really capitalized on. Partly, he would always rather use his own car than sign one out because he didn’t want to have to put up with other coppers’ tab-ends in the ashtrays, chocolate wrappers, used tissues and God knows what else all over the floor, not to mention the lingering germs and odours. Mostly, though, he needed to be in control, with his feet on the pedals, his hands on the steering-wheel.

  He also liked to control the music. It had always angered Sandra, the way he put on whatever CD he wanted to listen to, or turned on the television to a programme he wanted to watch. She claimed he was selfish. He said he always knew what he wanted to listen to or watch and she didn’t; besides, why should he listen to music or watch films he didn’t like? Another stand-off.

  Banks parked in front of a strip of shops set back from the main road near Bramley Town End, and he and Annie strolled down the hill towards the street where Gwen and Matthew Shackleton had lived. Both were dressed casually; neither looked like a police officer. Sometimes, feelings against all forms of authority ran high on these estates. People spotted strangers quickly enough as it was, and they were naturally suspicious of anyone in a suit. Which was hardly surprising: on an estate like this, if you saw someone you knew wearing a suit, you assumed he had a court appearance coming up; and if you saw a stranger wearing one, it was either the cops or the social.

  Banks had grown up on a similar estate in Peterborough. More modern than this one, but basically the same mix of grim and grimy terrace houses alongside the newer redbrick maisonettes and tower blocks, all covered in graffiti. When he was a kid, the street was cobbled, and they would have bonfires there every Guy Fawkes Night. The whole estate would come out and share their fireworks and food. Potatoes baked in foil at the edges of the fire, and people passed around trays of home-made parkin and treacle toffee. Neighbours would seize the opportunity to chuck their old furniture on the fire—a practice Banks’s mother said she thought was showing off. If Mrs Green at number sixteen threw her battered armchair on the bonfire, it was tantamount to telling everyone she could afford a new one.

  Eventually, the council tarmacked the street and put an end to the celebrations. Afterwards, they had to have their bonfire on a large field half a mile away; strangers from other estates started muscling in, looking for trouble, and the older people began to stay home and lock their doors.

  “How are we going to approach this?” Annie asked.

  “We’ll play it by ear. I just want to get a look at the lie of the land.”

  It was another hot day; people sat out on their doorsteps or dragged striped deck-chairs onto postage-stamp lawns, where the grass was parched pale brown for lack of rain. Banks couldn’t help but be aware of the suspicious eyes following their progress. From one garden, a couple of semi-naked teenage boys whistled at Annie and flexed the tattoos on their arms. Banks looked at her and saw her stick her hand behind her back and give them two fingers. They laughed.

  They passed two girls, neither of whom looked older than fifteen. Each was pushing a pram with one hand and holding a cigarette with the other. One of them had short pink-and-white-dyed hair, green nail varnish, black lipstick and a nose-stud; the other had jet-black hair, a large butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and a red dot in the centre of her forehead. Both wore high-heeled sandals, tight shorts and midriff-revealing tops; the one with the red dot also had a ring in her navel.

  “Get her,” one of them sneered as Banks and Annie walked by. “Little Miss Hoity-Toity.”

  “I’m beginning to think this wasn’t such a good idea, after all,” Annie said, when the girls had passed.

  “Why not? What’s wrong?”

  “Easy for you to ask. Nobody’s insulted you yet.”

  “They’re only jealous.”

  “What of? My good looks?”

  “No. Your designer jeans. Ah, here it is.”

  The address turned out to be on one of the narrower side-streets. Most of the doors had scratched and weathered paintwork, and the whole street looked run-down. All the windows of the old Shackleton house were open, and loud music blasted from inside.

  Next door, two men with huge beer bellies sat smoking and drinking Carlsberg Special Brew. An enormous woman sat on a tiny deck-chair at an angle to them, hips and thighs flowing over the edge. She looked as if she might be their mother. Both men were stripped to the waist, skin white as lard despite the sun; the woman wore a bikini top and garish pink shorts. All three of them followed Banks and Annie with their narrowed, piggy eyes, but nobody said anything.

  Banks knocked on the door. A dog growled inside the house. The people next door laughed. Finally, the door jerked open and a young skinhead in a red T-shirt and torn jeans stuck his head out, holding the barking dog by its studded collar. It looked like a Rottweiler to Banks.

  Banks swallowed and stepped back a couple of paces. He wasn’t normally scared of dogs, but this one had wicked-looking teeth. Maybe Annie was right. What could they find out anyway, nearly fifty years after the fact?

  “Who the fuck are you? What do you want?” the skinhead asked. The cords stood out on his neck. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen. Banks thought he could hear a baby crying somewhere beyond the music in the depths of the house.

  “Your mum and dad in?” Banks asked.

  He laughed. “I should think so,” he said. “They never go anywhere. Trouble is, you’ll have a bloody long journey. They live in Nottingham.”

  “So you live here?”

  “Course I fucking do. Look, I haven’t got all day.” The dog was still straining at its collar, drool dripping from its jowls, but it had turned quieter now and seemed to be settling down, just growling rather than barking and snapping.

  “I’d like some information,” said Banks.

  “About what?”

  “Look, can we come in?”

  “You must be fucking joking, mate. One step over this threshold and Gazza here’ll have you singing soprano in the church choir before you know it.”

  Banks looked at Gazza. He could believe it. He considered his options. Call Animal Control? The RSPCA? “Fine,” he said. “Then maybe you can tell us what we want to know out here?”

  “Depends.”

  “It’s the house I’m interested in.”

  The kid looked Annie up and down, then looked back at Banks. “House-hunting are you, then? I’d’ve thought you two would be after something a bit more up-market than this fucking slum.”

  “Not exactly house-hunting, no.”

  “Who is it, Kev?” came a woman’s voice from inside. Kev turned around and yelled back. “Mind yer own fucking business yer stupid cunt! Or you’ll be sucking yer meals through a straw for a week.”

  Banks sensed Annie stiffen beside him. He touched her gently on the forearm. The trio next door howled with laughter. The kid stuck his head further round the door, so they could see him, and smiled at them, pleased with himself. He gave them the thumbs-up sign.

  “How long have you lived here?” Banks asked.

  “Two years. What’s it to you?”

  “I’m interested in something that happened here fifty years ago. A suicide.”

  “Suic
ide? Fifty years ago? What, fucking haunted, is it?” He stuck his head around the door again to talk to the people next door. “Hear that lads? This is a fucking haunted house, this is. Maybe we could start charging an entry fee like those fucking stately homes.”

  They all laughed. Including Banks.

  The kid seemed so thrilled with his audience response that he repeated the comment. He then let go of the dog, which glanced uninterestedly at Banks and Annie and slunk off deeper into the house, no doubt towards a bowl of food. Maybe it wasn’t a Rottweiler after all. Banks was about as good on dogs as he was on wildflowers, constellations and trees. Most of nature, come to think of it. But he would get better, now he had the cottage by the edge of the woods. He had already learned to identify some of the birds— nuthatches, dunnocks and blue tits—and he had often heard a woodpecker knocking away at an ash trunk.

  “Do you know who lived here before you?” he asked. “Haven’t a clue, mate. But you can ask the wrinklies over the road. They’ve been here since the fucking ice age.” He pointedto the middle terrace house directly opposite. Mirror-image. Banks could already see a figure peeking from behind moth-eaten curtains.

  “Thanks,” he said. Annie followed him across the street.

  “I smell pork,” said one of the doorstep trio as they went. The others laughed. Someone made a hawking sound and spat loudly.

  After Banks and Annie had held their warrant cards up to the letter-box for inspection, the deadbolt and the chain came off and a hunched man, probably somewhere in his early seventies, opened the door. He had a hollow chest, deep-set eyes, a thin, lined face and sparse black and grey hair larded back with lashings of Brylcreem. That glint of self-pitying malice peculiar to those who have been knocked on their arses too many times by life had not been entirely extinguished from his rheumy eyes; a few watts of indignant outrage, at least, remained.