by D. B. Martin
‘And you’re a manipulative bastard.’ To me my voice sounded cool and unconcerned. In my hand, the fist of fury tightened and in my chest my heart attempted to break through my ribs.
‘What? You’re the one who fucked me over!’
‘And you’re the one who allowed his brothers to be abused to achieve his own ends. You sacrificed Georgie to the pushers and you sacrificed me to Jaggers. Did you ever bother to find out what he did to me to force me into a situation where it I would rather betray my own brother than face what he would do to me next? And did you ever bother to find out who got Georgie hooked and then kept him there? You had the power, Win. You were head of the Winners – you could have headed off the pushers and kept me and Georgie – your little brothers – out of your gang wars altogether, but you didn’t. You were too concerned with feathering your own nest, getting what you wanted and we were just the tools to help you get it. Well, Georgie found his own escape and I had to find mine. You became the weapon of your own destruction.’
I wanted to say more, tell him how terrified I’d been in the cellar, waiting for the rats to gnaw me to shreds, how disgusted I’d been with myself after Jaggers had violated me, how uneasy every day of my life in that home had been, wondering whether I would be beaten up, coerced or abused, and how I’d looked to him for safety – bigger, stronger, more confident. I didn’t. What was the point if he hadn’t already seen that for himself? I was tired – tired of pretence, of waiting and watching, of trying to be someone I wasn’t, of never stumbling or admitting to weakness and finding someone there to help me up again. He didn’t reply. His face was frozen in a mask of surprise. I wasn’t sure if it was surprise I’d argued back, or surprise because he hadn’t thought about any of it before.
‘What did he do to you?’ His voice was raw.
‘Do you really need me to describe it?’ I asked bitterly.
He hesitated. ‘Naw.’ I almost didn’t hear it. We stared at each other. I shrugged.
‘It’s in the past now, Win. Let’s say we’re quits.’ I wanted this over with. He made me sick to look at him. His mouth worked and then sagged at the corners.
‘Georgie died last year,’ he volunteered. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear but I wasn’t surprised.
‘Drugs?’
‘Hepatitis or something like that. They said it were dirty needles.’
I thought of Georgie and his dreamy expression – limpid blue eyes far away in another world he must have found better. Maybe it was. Maybe he was there right now, and it was a world of dreams, not nightmares. The pounding in my chest twisted into a hard knot at the thought I would never see Georgie again. The kind of sadness I should have felt for Margaret.
‘Who was it?’ Win asked abruptly.
‘What?’
‘Got him hooked?’
‘One of your cronies, I should think – or one you were fighting with. I don’t know. All I know is they only targeted him to get at you. One less in your army.’
‘It weren’t my fault.’
‘Not directly, but it was because of you and you just didn’t bother to think about it – or us. I was in the wrong letting you take the rap for the old woman. Maybe I should have told someone later that it was Jaggers, but you seemed to be getting on OK, in your own way, so I got on in mine.’
‘I thought you’d set it up together.’
‘I had no idea he was going to beat her up. I thought he was just going to get you into trouble for snatching the bag so you’d be out of his way quicker than having to wait for you to finish school. He was impatient.’
‘He said it were your idea.’
‘He said what? When?’
‘Don’t matter.’
‘It does to me.’
‘Well, it ain’t your business, is it Mr Clever Barrister Boy? It’s mine and I’ll sort it.’
‘Is it anything to do with why you’re here?’
‘I came to see what my little brother Kenny’s been up to, didn’t I?’
‘Kenny’s fine but he’s not here anymore. I’m Lawrence now. Kenny was my past – you are my past.’ He shifted awkwardly and I wondered if supporting such bulk was tiring. I could have offered him a seat but that would have been like inviting him to stay. ‘Why now though?’
‘Why what now?’
‘Coming to see me.’
‘Why not now?’
‘If you’d wanted to find me you could have easily done so years ago. Why wait until now.’
‘That’s my business.’
‘Well it’s mine too.’ Ironically it seemed it wasn’t the misdeeds of years ago that were going to set us at each other now, but something present day. Something Win didn’t want to tell me about. His chin jutted like it had always done when we were children and one of us had disagreed with his leadership.
‘I came to see if you were who I thought you were, that’s all. Now I know.’
‘And? Win, there has to be a reason for that. You don’t suddenly get curious after thirty-five years of not being bothered.’ I waited. The V-shaped scar contracted and expanded again as he swallowed.
‘I have me reasons, but ...’
For all his bluster and bulk he seemed weaker than me. I could have asked what his life had been like then, I suppose – really like. I could have reached across the abyss and grasped his hand. I could have described my path and why I’d taken it, and listened to an account of his. I almost wanted to. I almost wanted my family back, and yet the old associations still hung round me like a shroud waiting to engulf me whenever I allowed myself to remember. Like the boy, Win brought all the memories flooding back, all the misery and uncertainty, all the sick fear that had lain in the cavity of my chest where there should have been joyfulness. I felt the breath being expelled from my lungs, almost as if it was being sucked out of them and with it the noxious fumes of my childhood fear. My head spun and I felt suddenly empty. Inside was a void, waiting. The anxious child entering the children’s home still sat in my place at the desk but the man observed from across the divide. I heard myself speaking without it being me, but I let the man take over whilst the child adjusted to the void.
‘Then I think it’s time you explained them.’ Win shuffled his feet as if to spread the weight. The perspiration on his forehead stood out in small round globules, even in the murky light of the darkened room.
‘The kid.’ I waited. He cleared his throat. ‘He reminds me of you and then all of a sudden there you are, defending him. It were like a sign that I ought to see what you turned out like and then decide what to do about the kid.’
‘The kid? Danny Hewson?’
‘Danny, yeah.’
‘How do you know Danny?’ I’d already guessed. It was obvious. Win was a tallyman. The one with the V. He didn’t answer. I tried another approach. ‘OK, what did Mrs Harris owe you?’
‘Who?’ He looked genuinely confused.
‘Mrs Harris, the old lady that Danny has been accused of killing.’
‘Oh, her.’ He looked disinterested and disinclined to say any more.
‘You didn’t know her then?’
‘Nah.’
‘So you’re not the tallyman Danny talks about?’
‘Tallyman?’ He was mystified. ‘I ain’t no tallyman, and I don’t know the old gel – only what happened to her.’ I believed him. So who was the tallyman? Was Danny confused? If the tallyman with the scar wasn’t Win, who was he? And why had Win felt the need to confront me and yet back down so quickly when he had every right to be as angry with me for my part in his incarceration all those years ago as I was with him for my abuse? Now it was my turn to be mystified. I wanted to press him about it but I knew him of old and his belligerent expression told me all too clearly he wouldn’t be pressed any further on this point. I decided to play the disinterest card.
‘Well, you’ve satisfied your curiosity now and seen who and what I am. Do we have any more business to settle between us?’ He gaped at me, all pretence at aggress
or disintegrating.
‘You’re a cold bastard, aren’t you? Don’t you want to know about any of your kin?’
‘I don’t know. Do I?’ On reflection it was as much a question of myself as him. Probably, in the furthest depths of the child who still lived inside the man, I did. I still wanted to be bossed by Sarah and Binnie, gently teased by George, and hero-worshipped by Pip and Jim. I even missed Mary, even though I’d ignored her most of the time – as we all had. Most of all, I missed Ma. I didn’t know how to say that. Nor did I want to say any of it to this obnoxious bully-boy who couldn’t ever be my brother. As individuals we were too far apart. But unexpectedly, curiosity was too great. ‘Tell me then. Tell me how Georgie died to start with.’
‘Told you. That blood thing.’
‘Hepatitis. When was it diagnosed?’
‘Eh?’
‘When did he become ill?’
‘Dunno. He went yellow. Looked like a Chinky when I saw him. I had to identify him for the coroner. I hadn’t seen him for a while by then. He were living in a squat in Brighton – not far from the home. He went his own way, if you know what I mean – gays and the like, though I don’t think he were.’ I pictured the depravation my brother must have known; the demise of spirit and soul before he succumbed to collapse of the body. I hated Win then with a hatred I couldn’t control or quench. If I’d had sufficient strength and lack of dignity I would have pummelled his brutish pug face, hammered his useless flabby gut, battered him to a pulp for letting our sweet-faced dreamer of a brother become the base drug-ridden addict he’d had to ID; yellow and shrivelled on a mortuary slab. His face twisted momentarily in a caricature of grief. ‘I wish I hadn’t seen him like that,’ he added sadly. Despite my ire with him we shared a moment of joint tribute – to the brother we’d lost and the childhood we’d mislaid. Our mutual silence muffled the sounds of the world around us and locked us into our mutual tragedy. I broke it when it became too intimate. I didn’t want intimacy with this thug.
‘What about the others?’
‘The gels are still around. I can put you in touch with them if you want. Don’t know how they’d take to you. Ain’t been easy for them and you’ve got pots of money you ain’t sharing. One of the boys bought it out in the Falklands. The other’s a bit doolally since – but OK when he ain’t pissed. Mary’s in a home. She’s a bit screwy still – it’s called something but I can’t remember what. All right some days though.’ I held my breath and waited to hear whether Ma and Pop were still around. Ma would be in her eighties if she was. Win faltered. ‘Do you want to see them?’
‘Maybe. What about our parents?’
‘Pop went a while ago – a stroke. Ma, no. Sarah could tell you all about her.’ The decision was made with that statement. Come one, come all. I had a question to ask Ma, if I still could – one the boy inside had wanted to ask all through the long years of waiting and surviving. The same one Danny had asked me and I had asked him. Why? Even if you couldn’t stop us being taken, why didn’t you get us back?
Margaret had provided me with all the addresses. It wasn’t that I needed facts. I needed permission and I needed absolution. I reached into the desk drawer and flung a legal pad and a pen onto the desk and gestured to them. ‘You can write their contact details on that, and if you’ve nothing else to tell me you can go.’ He flung me a look of disgust but scribbled down some addresses and phone numbers nonetheless, and then flung the pad and pen back at me. I looked at it peremptorily and then pushed it to one side. There was one more than on Margaret’s list, but I was loathe to ask Win about it. Something about it was ringing other alarm bells anyway.
‘By the way, you never said when Jaggers told you I was responsible for setting you up?’
‘Why?’
‘I just wondered. It can’t have been long ago otherwise you would have come looking for me sooner.’
‘Nonce,’ he enunciated clearly, looking straight at me. I laughed disdainfully.
‘Sticks and stones, Win. I’m long past being hurt by words now.’ But again, I was lying. He left without replying.
11: Hidden Agendas
The addresses Win had written down were the same as the ones Margaret had bequeathed me, including presumably the squat Georgie had been living in. There were none for Ma on either list. I put the list in my top drawer next to the one Margaret had written and locked the drawer. For the moment I was too shaken up by the encounter with Win to face any more emotional upheaval. I sank back in the outsized office chair which so perfectly matched the overdone opulence of Chambers and allowed it to envelop me. Increasing age can be ignored most of the time when still in what the papers laughingly call your ‘prime’ but stress and trauma strip away the ability to resist vulnerability. My ‘prime’ had been sorely tested by revisiting the past. I felt every ache of middle age now. If Kat could see me as consumed by weariness as I was now, would she still think me the ‘best’?
I closed my eyes and tried to blot everything out whilst I waited for some modicum of the energy that had been drained from me to seep back in. The noise of the clerks and the everyday hubbub of business was muffled by the heavy office door and the blanket of genteel respectability the décor and manners of its inhabitants afforded. I remained cocooned in my complex world of confusion, listening for nothing, relieved I had no appointments scheduled for that afternoon.
I must have dozed after a while. The early afternoon sun, poking its way through the heavy drapes, had sweated itself down to a watery early evening haze by the time I roused myself fully, mouth as thick and foul as the bottom of a bird cage and back rigid from slumping awkwardly in sleep. It was quiet and I wondered if everyone had gone home, leaving me there – solitary survivor of the day. I eased myself from behind the desk and walked stiffly to the door. Win had closed it firmly behind him and it had wedged shut. It gave the impression of being locked unless you pulled it hard so Gregory probably thought I was still engaged in conversation, or had even gone home. Heather’s room was empty, the lilies still flooding the landing with their perfume, and Francis’s ash storm had settled for the night. Jeremy’s door was shut and the junior’s room was abandoned. I looked at my watch. It was six forty-five. They would all have gone home by now – even Gregory, Head Clerk and master of the domain. I felt at once lonely and at peace.
I walked back along the corridor, savouring having the building to myself and intending to merely go back to my room and think unhurriedly through the events of the day when I remembered where I’d left the case notes. I retraced my steps and went silently downstairs. Normally one would have expected an empty building to feel hollow, forlornly echoing its departed resident’s noise. The soft furnishings of Chambers seemed designed to deaden all sound and all sense of life once business was done for the day. Only I and the trapped fly buzzing desperately against the clerks’ window remained of the daily battle between right and wrong. The clerks’ office was piled high with the latest briefs awaiting distribution, pink ribbons festooning the mountain like a miniature celebration. The post out trays lay empty, like a row of open mouths announcing their surprise at what had passed through them. Margaret still had a tray allocated to her even though she’d officially left Chambers when we’d married. Her unofficial extra-curricular duties as champion of lost causes and social wheel-oiler for me had more often than not benefited Chambers too by enhancing our reputation as respected icons of society, so her place here was permanent, if informal.
The tray had lain empty for several days now the first flurry of post-mortem correspondence had been intercepted and prohibited by Gregory in his crusade to protect me from the added burden it represented. Only my clerk had been allowed routine access and he was as useless as an already licked stamp. Momentarily my feelings towards Gregory softened to gratitude and something even akin to affection, miserable prying bastard though he could be. Odd that it now had a large manila envelope protruding from it – both in that it had arrived and managed to bypass both Gregory a
nd my clerk, and that Gregory hadn’t officiously mentioned it to me and tried to peer over my shoulder as I opened it. I collected it en route to the basement.
Entering via the back door was nerve-racking enough during the daytime when Chambers was humming with perky admin staff shuffling papers and clerks jibing and vying with each other for cases on behalf of their briefs. The camaraderie and competitiveness between them had always amused me. Now, with the hush of the deserted building creeping after me like an assassin targeting its quarry, I was unnerved. It was the similarity to descending the steps to the cellar that came back to haunt me every time – hence the reason I used the way in even more rarely than any of my colleagues. As with Win, it wasn’t fear that terrified me, it was the emotion of fear itself.
I clicked all the light switches on at the head of the stairs and clattered down them as if creating so much noise would ward off unseen terrors. The case folder was still wedged where I’d hidden it, back cover bent at the corner where I’d rammed it into its hiding place in my haste to reach the bolthole of my office. I pulled it out and flattened the cover, smoothing it back into place and ruffling the thin post-it note stuck to the inner edge of a sheet inside as I did so. I must have missed it earlier – how could I have done that? Usually I was so thorough – Margaret had always teased me that it was one of my virtues, even after sex. I’d never been sure at the time whether she was teasing me or it was a genuinely meant compliment. Now I suspected it had been a private joke for her – and not necessarily particularly flattering to me.
