by Judy Astley
Jess dropped the swatch she’d been looking at as if it was about to threaten her own mortality. ‘Matt, you’re not serious? Tell me honestly, has it really become your life’s ambition to be an undertaker?’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t be hands-on. You need qualifications and experience for that. I’ll be a sleeping partner,’ he corrected. ‘Hey that’s really funny when you think about it,’ he chortled as he poured water into the cafetière.
‘Yes, very nearly,’ Jess conceded.
‘Oh come on Jess, lighten a little. I was just passing Liberty and thought I’d pop in, you know?’ He scooped up the fabric pieces and shoved them back in the bag.
‘It’s starting to get to me,’ he went on. ‘All this having time on my hands and nothing to do with it. It’s different when it’s time off, because that’s time off from something to get back to. This is forever-time-off and I can see it might drive me crazy in the long term.’
‘You mean you aren’t going to hang about in the Leo for ever, drinking beer and gossiping?’ Jess teased.
‘Well I wouldn’t mind, I suppose. It’s a very convivial place and being sociable is something I’m good at. But no-one’s going to pay me to do that and even I can see the money will run out one day.’ He put a mug of coffee on the table next to Jess. A couple of drops trickled down the side and spread themselves into the purple satin and Matthew stared at them, looking dejected.
‘I dropped in at the office,’ he said quietly. ‘I know I said I wouldn’t but, well I thought I’d say hallo, see what they’re all up to.’
‘So how was it? Everyone pleased to see you?’
‘Sort of.’ Matt thought for a minute. ‘It’s hard to tell what they really think. I mean to be honest, I felt a bit like a spare part. Which of course I am. I don’t think anyone knew what to do with me – when you’ve been fired you’re just an embarrassment if you turn up again.’ He gazed into his coffee. ‘I wish I hadn’t gone there now. They probably thought I was missing them all or that I was hoping they’d realized I was completely indispensable.’
‘And are you?’ Jess asked quietly.
Matt grinned. ‘Fuck, no! Felt sorry for them all as it happens. But – it would have been great to go in there and say, “Hey suckers, I sure as hell fell on my feet!” I should have realized the only question each and every bugger was going to ask was “So what are you doing now?” Right now, there’s no real answer to that.’
Jess spluttered into her coffee. ‘You could have shown them your coffin linings, taken a few early bookings!’
‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
It went against the grain to call the police but it had to be done. In spite of their being, in his opinion, agents of the nation’s would-be oppressors, they were the only ones who could deal with this. George had left it overnight already and there was every chance that the boy had been back with a car that actually worked and taken everything away. He still had Zoe’s Walkman of course, but that would be pretty pitiful compensation if he had to admit to Jess and Matt that he’d put off bringing in the law till all their electrical goods had gone walkabout again. What did feel good though was being able to call Jess and tell her that everything she’d had stolen had been found, presumably none the worse for being stored in the old Sierra. It was just a shame about that boy. He’d had the makings of something better than a petty thief – and not even a very good one at that.
‘Hey Tash!’ Zoe caught up with her sister in the school’s back courtyard as they were about to leave for home. ‘I rang Mum to ask about the field-trip money and guess what! Grandad’s found all our stuff and we’ll get it all back again!’ Even as she bounced with excitement she realized Natasha was probably the last (or certainly the second to last) person that this was good news for.
Natasha stopped walking and stared at Zoe. ‘Where did he find it?’
Surely she didn’t really need to ask – Zoe felt confused. ‘In the old Sierra of course, where your thieving boyfriend stashed it.’
‘It might not have been him.’ Natasha glared at Zoe. ‘Everyone’s just assuming.’
Zoe laughed. ‘Oh come on Tasha! You know it was him! It’s obvious!’
‘Yeah, well …’ Natasha shrugged. ‘Listen Zoe, I need just one more favour from you, the last one I’ll ever ask you, ever in my whole life, I promise.’
Zoe started backing away, scared of what she was going to say. ‘Not if it involves Tom, please Tash. There’s been enough trouble from keeping stupid secrets already. I’m not covering for you, not any more.’
Natasha grabbed her arm to stop her running off and hauled her towards the school gate with her and pointed across the road.
‘Look, he’s over there, in that black car,’ she hissed. ‘He’s waiting for me. I just want to see him for an hour, then I’ll be home. I promise. Nobody else needs to know. Just tell Mum and Dad I’ve gone to Claire’s, that’s all.’ She almost let go of Zoe, then renewed her grip. ‘No, second thoughts, tell them we’ve gone to the library to look something up for homework. If they think I’m at Claire’s they might phone. I don’t seem to be trusted too much at the moment.’
‘Well what do you expect?’
‘God, Zo, you really don’t get it do you?’ She let go of her sister’s arm and raced off, running into the road without looking and making car tyres screech. Zoe watched as Natasha hurled herself into the car and flung herself on Tom. Then she turned away, she didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to see or know anything, especially not another bloody secret. Didn’t these people have anyone else to offload onto?
‘Ever been to a fortune-teller, sweetie?’ As ever, Paula’s voice was crammed with enthusiasm. Every idea she had seemed to thrill her completely to pieces. It made Jess laugh every time – the exuberance was delightfully catching.
‘I can’t say that I have,’ she admitted. ‘But I sometimes read my horoscope. I forget it again immediately though so I never know if it’s right.’
‘Oh me too, me too. But if we sent you to a proper one, someone with the full kit, crystal ball, tarot cards, palm skills, the lot, would you try and write something down that you could remember and then share it with your loyal public?’
Jess considered for a moment. ‘Well it depends what I was told. Suppose I heard I was going to win the Lottery on a rollover week? I’d have crowds of people outside and a thousand begging letters. Or suppose it was all doom and gloom …?’
‘Now, now, don’t be so defeatist! Do what real journalists do: exaggerate or make it up, whichever looks cuter on the page. Right, I’ll ring round and sort something out for you. Now: let me tell you about what I’ve been up to with your sexy neighbour.’
Jess listened as Paula, sounding more and more like a schoolgirl relishing her first good sexual encounter, told her more than she really wanted to hear about Eddy’s bed preferences. It seemed he had a penchant for the sort of sex toys that Jess had last seen when she’d agreed to go with Angie to an Ann Summers party because Angie had claimed she was ‘too shy’, as she’d put it, to go on her own. Angie of course had turned out to be the life and soul, prancing around the floral-wallpapered sitting room in Wimbledon brandishing an unappealing and bizarrely orange dildo. The Ann Summers rep had offered it at a discount, on the grounds that the lurid colour made it a ‘second’. Angie had also stripped right down in front of an uncurtained main-road window to try on an emerald green satin basque before the evening’s hostess could get her hands on it and claim it as the Free Gift she was entitled to.
‘So are you any nearer deciding to move in with him?’ Jess asked Paula once she’d paused for breath.
‘Yes, I think I might be. He’s amazingly energetic. And I don’t just mean in that way.’
Jess wondered if they were talking about the same man. Any connection between ‘Eddy’ and ‘energy’ did not immediately spring to mind. She had only rarely seen him in anything other than a sprawling position, occasionally varied with a loping am
ble as he, like a lazy cat, paced his territory, but then maybe that was love for you. It could, as the song went, change everything.
‘God I’m knackered.’ Eddy folded his arms on the table-top and laid his weary, shaggy head down on them.
‘Not surprised,’ Wandering Wilf chortled. ‘You’ve got a young thing in the house, well compared with you anyway – they take a lot of keeping up with.’
Eddy raised his head and met Matthew’s eye. A glance was exchanged that expressed the non-likelihood of Wilf having any clue how it would be to entertain someone like Paula on a nightly basis.
‘Keeping you up late is she?’ Matt chuckled.
‘I’m still fully functioning if that’s what you’re getting at.’ Eddy grinned. ‘But, Christ, only just. Only just.’ He yawned loudly and stretched his arms high in the air. There was a clinking sound as his chunky silver bracelets resettled themselves.
‘Oi, watch out!’ Ben, bringing out another tray of drinks for them, sidestepped neatly, dodging the waving arms.
‘Sorry mate. Oh good, more supplies.’ Eddy helped himself to a beer from the tray. ‘Course, the problem is, she’s started hinting about moving in. I’m not good with them on the premises full-time. They start wanting to do arrangements with bits of material. I haven’t met one yet who gets my thing about not having curtains.’
‘That’s because the whole street can see their tits when they’re getting their kit off.’ Ben, with no more customers to serve at this late hour of the afternoon, had sat down to join them at the table outside in the sunshine. ‘It’s all right for us, our private bits are lower than the window ledges.’
‘Unless,’ Matt thought deeply, ‘we’re stripping off downstairs, and the people who are looking are upstairs across the road.’
‘That’s just pervy. People like that will find a way of copping an eyeful one way or another. It’s a kind of addiction.’
‘Nah, can’t be. I’ve done addiction and it’s not like that,’ Eddy decreed. ‘Micky off again today?’ he asked Ben.
‘It’s the cousin’s funeral. There was a bit of a delay because nobody could agree about the best way to do it.’
‘Did he sort out an undertaker?’ Matt asked.
‘Yep. Found a woman who makes wicker coffins. You wind up the body in pure wool …’
‘By the yard or would a good Paul Smith suit count?’ Matt interrupted.
‘He wasn’t the suit type,’ Ben told him. ‘Anyway, then you have this body-shaped wicker thing. There was a bit of trouble, Micky’s sister complained it was like one of those things you take the cat to the vet in and the woman who’d made it misheard and thought she was ordering one, because she makes those as well. Tricky.’ They all nodded solemnly.
The enthusiasm for running their own smart undertaking business seemed to have waned. Matt had left his bag of fabric samples at home and, although sure that their idea had been a good one that would, in the right hands, revolutionize the business and make someone a fortune, he accepted with little regret that it wasn’t for him. The problem was, what was for him? More and more just recently he’d realized that the only day-to-day ambience he actually wanted to be in was that of the Leo, which in his role of constant customer wasn’t perhaps entirely healthy. It was expensive too. If you started off the day with coffee and a Danish or one of Ben’s ham and cheese croissants, hung about long enough for a lunchtime sandwich and a glass of wine, then brought Jess in later for supper, it all added up. He’d realized that, even if he came up with the gem of a moneymaking idea, he wasn’t someone who would be comfortable running things from home. If the kind of business opportunity occurred that would involve setting up a desk and a computer in a corner of the conservatory he’d find it very difficult to get his head round the idea that for certain hours of the day, in the place that he associated with comfortable relaxed domesticity, he’d have to apply himself to work. It wouldn’t feel natural.
Natasha knew the car was stolen, she wasn’t an idiot. It was quite a nice one, a Ford something, she could see from the badge in the middle of the steering wheel, though she didn’t know exactly what. It wasn’t a very new car but it was very clean inside and she felt a pang of regret for the poor person who must have come out from their house or office or whatever and discovered that it had gone. It had had a lot of care. There was no rubbish in it; no tissues stuffed in the side pockets or sandwich wrappers or Pringle tubes like in her mum’s Golf. The dashboard didn’t have a layer of dust and there were track marks on the carpet from where it had been carefully vacuumed. It had probably belonged to the sort of person who always checked the oil and tyres when they filled up with petrol and drove her dad to impatient fury when he queued up behind them for fuel because they took such a long time to get going. He always drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and muttered ‘Come on, get on with it’ as the occupant of the car in front meticulously emptied ashtrays, cleared the side pockets of a couple of sweet papers and washed down the windscreen (with a special little spongey thing), all the time with the car blocking up the space at the pump. ‘Now give him another half an hour to find the socket for his bloody seat belt …’ Matt would then say as the driver eventually climbed in and started adjusting the mirror.
Just now, travelling with Tom along the road that ran beside the river, Natasha felt annoyingly guilty about her parents. If they knew she was riding along in a stolen car … It could have been a thrilling feeling, she’d have told Claire (till Claire went all straight and strange) that it was, but really she felt a bit empty inside and slightly depressed as if she’d been given a huge treat, something she’d been whining for for ages and then found she didn’t actually like. It wasn’t about Tom. She liked being with him. She loved his hand resting on her leg as he drove and she loved watching his face as he concentrated on what he was doing, sensing where the road went, what the traffic ahead was going to do.
‘Where are we going?’ Natasha asked Tom after she felt she’d given him a long enough silence to get used to this car.
He shrugged and then changed gear, noisily. ‘Thought we’d just find a quiet lane and stop and talk for a bit.’
That was OK with her. It was enough just to be with him: she was glad he wasn’t intending to do anything more complicated. It would be bad enough going home to back up the simple lie that she’d made Zoe tell. It would be much harder if the lie was hiding an even bigger one: a lie about sex.
‘This is a good place.’ Tom pulled into a small car park under the trees, close to a recreation ground. After-school parents and au pairs were pushing small children on swings or watching nervously over the roundabout as bigger children jumped on and off, playing games that were too alarming and daring for their little ones. Around the edge of the playground was the grubbier evidence of use by older kids. Tasha, looking down at the ground just below the car’s door, could see cigarette packets, with bits torn off the sides, a sure giveaway that someone had been here smoking dope. If she looked further, into the bushes beyond the roadside, there would probably be condoms, discarded needles, abandoned bits of clothing. It was depressing to be thinking like this. It made her feel as if she’d stopped being able to see anything as simply beautiful, but had started to smell out something sordid beyond.
‘It’s good, this bit of London, like being in the country.’ Tom leaned back in the seat and lit a cigarette, using a flashy gold lighter that looked, to Natasha, as if it belonged to someone far richer, older and more sophisticated than he was.
She didn’t respond to his comment, instead she pointed to the lighter.
‘Whose is that?’
‘Mine,’ Tom told her simply.
‘Is that “mine” as in “it is now”?’
‘Probably. Till someone nicks it or I lose it.’ He grinned at her. ‘What’s wrong, don’t you like it here? Shall we move?’
‘No, no it’s fine. It isn’t like the country though. It’s not clean. There’s filth beyond the prettied-up edges.’
‘The country’s not that clean. It’s full of wurzels with filthy minds. Everyone thinks they’re OK because they live on the land and keep to themselves.’ He looked angry, Natasha could see. His eyes had gone cloudy as if he was hiding deep anger.
‘Is that where you’re from? Wurzel-land?’ She tried laughing a bit, feeling the need to lighten things up. She wanted him to be cocky like he usually was, strong and confident the way he’d been when she first met him. It frightened her that he might be vulnerable because when he got caught, and he was sure to one day, he’d suffer. It should all go over him as if it didn’t matter. Crime could just be something he did for now, for a laugh and to get by till grown-up life came along and he went and did something else. Surely, that was how it would happen?
Tom threw the half-finished cigarette out of the window and pulled Natasha close to him. ‘No more talking,’ he said, smiling at her. He started kissing her before she could argue. He tasted of smoke, smelled of oil and dust and he hadn’t answered her question but it didn’t matter, not now that his hand was working its way under her shirt.
‘We should go,’ she said eventually, knowing that if they stayed much longer that even bigger lie would be there. ‘I don’t want to, but I have to, otherwise they’ll know.’
‘OK. Tomorrow though?’
‘Yeah, tomorrow.’ She nearly added ‘if …’ but stopped herself. They both knew about the ‘if’ factor, the ‘if you haven’t been caught’, the ‘if Zoe hasn’t told’, the ‘if you don’t have other girls to see’. They didn’t need saying.
The square was filling up with after-school teenagers. Matt looked at his watch and even to his leisure-fixated brain it seemed as if he’d spent far too much of his day at this table outside the Leo.
‘Better be on my way,’ he said.
‘You’ve said that three times now.’ Eddy grinned at him. ‘Coming back to mine for a spliff?’
‘Better not. I should be home, show an interest in the girls and their school day. I think it’s what home-bound men are supposed to do. Jess calls it “joining in” as if I’m on a visit from Mars doing a spot of Earth-observing.’
