He turned, went back into the newsagent’s, and bought himself a clipboard, a pen, and a pad of paper. You could go anywhere with a clipboard and ask all sorts of questions. Whether you got any answers was another thing entirely, but it made a start.
Peal Road was one of many containing an unbroken row of Edwardian houses, each the same as its neighbour, with a bay window next to the front door and a tiny front garden between it and the pavement. He found number forty-eight. It looked a bit more dilapidated than its neighbours. The paintwork on the door was flaking off, and all the curtains were drawn.
He rang the bell. Nothing happened. He waited, rang again, and finally heard steps coming toward the door. It was opened by a tall, thin woman in her late thirties or early forties wearing a faded silk kimono. Her face had probably once been pretty but now seemed drained of all vitality. It was framed by unkempt blond hair that came down to her shoulders.
In a tired voice she asked Bill, ‘Is that woman complaining about the dog again?’
‘Who?’ asked Bill.
‘The cow two doors up. She hates dogs. Look, come in, he’s under control, you’ll see for yourself. She hates dogs, that woman.’
Bill said no more but followed her into the house, clutching his clipboard in front of him like a shield. Despite the rundown exterior, the inside of the house was quite clean, and the few pieces of furniture were worn, but not worn out. The living room had French windows opening onto a small garden.
He was invited to sit down on an easy chair opposite a threadbare sofa covered in a plaid blanket. On the blanket lay a huge, mostly grey dog of very mixed parentage who, seeing Bill, got up on long legs and padded over to greet him, tail wagging happily.
Bill loved dogs, but was usually wary when he didn’t know the beast in question. This one just oozed friendliness, however, and was soon practically in Bill’s lap being patted, petted, and told what a good boy he was. The dog looked to be in better condition than his mistress and was obviously well cared for.
Seeing Bill being so kind to her dog, the woman relaxed somewhat. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
Bill said yes, please, and she went into the small kitchen next door and, through an open hatch that joined the two rooms, asked him how he took it. Bill thought her voice had a slight county accent.
Looking about him, Bill decided the place actually had a homely, comfortable air about it, but one that showed there wasn’t much money to go around. There were no photographs on the mantelpiece or on the shelf unit that took up one wall. Few pictures (and those cheap reproductions) adorned the walls, and there was only a small television. The big dog continued to demand attention; Bill scratched the animal behind its ears and did all the things he knew would please his new friend.
The tea was brought in, and Bill noticed that during the brewing the lady had brushed her hair. She didn’t look quite as old as she had in the doorway, but there was still a wariness about her that he thought was caused by something more than just having a stranger in her home; the wariness of the hunted rather than the hunter.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bill said, ‘I didn’t get your name. Mine’s Bill Sawyer.’
‘It’s Marshall. Lucy Marshall.’
‘Have you lived here long?’ asked Bill.
‘A few years,’ she replied with a frown, ‘but you must know that already if you’re from the council.’
‘The thing is,’ Bill said, deciding to trust his instinct and simply tell her the truth, ‘I’m not from the council. I’m here because I need your help.’
‘My what?’ She stood up quickly and Bill could see that she was shaking. ‘Get out! Get out now or I’ll call the police!’
Bill lifted up both hands in a gesture of entreaty. ‘No, please,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘Please hear me out. Let me explain, please.’
The last couple of days had all but drained Bill of the slight reserves of energy he had. Illness and worry had combined to etch lines of fatigue on his face. Lucy, despite her panic, must have noticed these because she sat back down.
‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘But this better be good.’ Her voice and eyes were still cold and untrusting.
‘There’s a man called Skates who has threatened me and my family. I believe it’s a real threat and I need to know more about him before I can even begin to think of how to protect myself and, more importantly, them.’
‘Go to the police,’ said the woman, but her voice was less sharp than before.
‘From the little I know already, I don’t think that would make any difference. And besides, I don’t think the police or even a bloody brigade of Guards could stop a mad bastard called Warren who works for Skates.’
Bill’s voice trailed off; he started to cough, and this time the spasm shook him to the core. It took Lucy by surprise and she found herself hoping the poor old thing wasn’t going to collapse in front of her. That was all she needed!
With a great effort, Bill straightened up and muttered an apology, trying to smile as he did so, but his face was grey and drawn. Though he had tricked his way into her house, Lucy detected none of the guile in him she would have expected in a con artist. She had reason to know she was not the best judge of character in the world, but he just seemed to be an old man who was in some form of trouble. Trouble that came from someone she loathed, feared, and hated. She sighed.
‘You’d better tell me all about it,’ she said. ‘I was married to him once. But the last thing I want right now, or ever, is more trouble coming from that direction.’
Bill sank back into his chair and smiled. Something in Lucy’s voice and the way she had relaxed gave him a glimmer of hope.
‘Hang on,’ she said. She rose to her feet and headed back to the kitchen. As she passed him, her hand rested lightly on his shoulder for a moment, sending a glow of warmth into him. Returning, she set down two glasses and a bottle of whisky on a coffee table within easy reach of them both. After pouring two healthy measures, she picked up her glass and nodded at Bill to proceed.
He told Lucy his story from start to finish. He spoke of where he lived, the work he did, and how her ex-husband had come into his life. He told her about Warren pinning him to his chair and how helpless and furious it had made him feel, and about his family and the threats Skates had made concerning them. He told her he had found out about Skates’s past, looked up the trial, and found the address that had led him to her.
By the time he had finished, he was wiped out. Seeing this, Lucy told him to stay where he was, have another drink, and she would see to a bit of lunch for them both. She opened the French windows and the dog went out and did what dogs do with a gusto that Bill envied. He felt exhausted, but also as if a huge weight had been lifted from him.
Lucy came back into the room dressed in jeans and a large sweater, with her hair in a ponytail.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You look like you could do with some food.’ Lucy had set the small dining table with two places and put out a pile of sandwiches and two rather nice Spode cups without saucers and, he was pleased to see, without any cracks. She saw him pick up his cup and carefully examine the bottom.
In answer to her look, Bill said, ‘It’s old habits, I’m afraid. People in my trade always look for the right marks. These are nice pieces; must have had a few gallons of tea through them in the last hundred or so years.’
‘Well, they’re all I’ve got left of that set now, what with one thing and another. Anyway, lunch is just cheese, I’m afraid,’ she said with an embarrassed smile. ‘Times are a little hard at the moment.’
‘Why?’ asked Bill.
‘It’s a long story. But you told me yours, so I’ll tell you mine. I had a breakdown a few years ago. Fact is, I was in a nuthouse for a while. Eventually they decided they’d done all they could do for me and I ended up here. I have a very small income from some money my grandmother left me, but that’s it.’
She smiled ruefully at Bill. ‘I keep thinking I’m going to
start my life over again just as soon as I pull myself together, but I’ve been working at it for a few years now and I still feel pretty scattered.’
‘Don’t you have any friends or family?’ asked Bill. ‘No one who could help you?’
‘No, not really. I haven’t seen my mother in years; after father died she remarried, but I never visited.’
As they ate the meagre lunch, Lucy continued her story.
‘My father was a brute. No, that’s not fair; he felt he was washed up and useless, and it made him bitter. He was sort of retired and much older than mummy. He had been a half colonel and was dumped by the MOD in one of their defence department cuts. Anyway, he required instant obedience in all things at all times. He never got another real job, but he would try to help out at charities and things until someone upset him, and then he’d storm off back home and take it out on us. Mummy, bless her, had a little problem with the bottle, and provided there was enough booze in the house, would while away her time making happy hour last all day and, if possible, most of the evening as well. The truly bizarre part is that her second husband is a man exactly like my father.’
She looked down into her cup, sad and silent for a while, shoulders hunched, closed in on herself like a book that has been slammed shut. Then, with slight shrug, she looked at Bill and continued.
‘I met up with Darren after I left home. Ditched A-levels and never went back.’
‘How old were you?’ asked Bill.
‘Old enough to know better, young enough not to care,’ laughed Lucy wryly. ‘I thought I knew it all. It was 1985, I think; summertime, anyway.’
She sat back, her mind in the past when, for just a little while, her world was a simpler and much kinder place.
‘Some friends from school and I joined a load of hippies and became part of the Peace Convoy. We were making our way to Stonehenge for a free festival. Old coaches, families in trucks and caravans; it was really cool, something special.’
Bill said, ‘I remember that. It was in all the papers, wasn’t it? Pictures of police brutality and all sorts of horrors.’
‘They didn’t show the half of it. It was terrible, really terrible.’
Lucy sat silent for a while, sadness wrapped around her like a cloak. The past she was seeing now was no summer of love, just men in uniforms beating women and children and smashing their homes and dreams. Bill said nothing; he wished he could light his pipe but didn’t want to disturb her.
After a moment or two, she carried on. ‘Anyway, the upshot of all that was I found myself headed to London. I certainly wasn’t going back home. I had no idea what I could do, but one of the travellers had given me the address of a commune in a squat and I was making for that.’
‘How the hell were you going to get there?’ asked Bill. ‘Hitch. I was a bit dazed, I suppose, but I really didn’t give it much thought. I just reckoned if I could get to London and find this place I would be safe. Stupid, I know.’
‘Not stupid,’ said Bill. ‘You had been in a war zone; you were just beating a hasty retreat from all sorts of shit.’
‘I suppose you’re right. When the uniforms were smashing into all those lovely people and shouting and swearing at them, all I could think of was my father and how he used to shout and swear at mummy and me. So I ran away. Again.’
Bill didn’t want to cause her more pain, but he had to find out how Skates fitted in; where and when that bastard had begun his part in wrecking her life. It was as though Lucy had read his thoughts and she carried on with her story.
‘I got a lift with a bloke in a van. He thought any hippy girl was up for a screw, of course. ‘How about a bit of free love, then,’ he said, and he pulled over into a lay-by. I tried to get out, but he was too quick for me. It was horrible. He stank and his hands were everywhere at once.’
Bill felt ashamed as he sat listening to this, as though he represented his entire gender. Lucy noticed his look and smiled at him to show she knew the sin was not his.
‘I was ridiculously naive. I really believed all that peace and love stuff. I wanted nothing but happiness for others and I thought that would somehow protect me. You know, karma and all that shit.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Bill.
‘Well, would you believe it, another car was parked in the same lay-by and the driver was having a piss in the hedge, so Mr Hands didn’t see him. I was half out the passenger door screaming blue murder when this man came back, saw me, went over to the driver’s door of the van, wrenched it open, and gave the swine a damned good hiding.’
‘It was Darren Skates, wasn’t it?’ said Bill.
‘The very man,’ said Lucy. ‘And that’s when things really started to go downhill, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. He put me in his car and drove away. Unfortunately, I left my bag behind with what few clothes I had and, more importantly, that damned bit of paper that had the address of the commune in London on it.’
She got up and went to make more tea; Bill munched his way through another sandwich. The cheese was dry, not like the stuff he was used to back in Somerset, and the bread was slightly stale. Lucy came back in and sat down. She had not eaten much.
Bill passed her the plate of sandwiches and said, ‘Come on, eat something. You can’t cut down brambles in memory lane without something in your stomach.’
Lucy laughed and took a sandwich. ‘I like you,’ she said. ‘Have you ever been married?’
Bill told her about his very ex-wife, Beryl. Like so many young couples in the early 1960s, after she discovered she was pregnant there was a traumatic interview with her parents, followed by Handel’s Largo played on shotgun bolts by her furious father, who thought she could have done a lot better for herself. This was a view that Beryl increasingly shared until she finally left Bill some thirteen years later.
But all that was a long time ago now, and he had taken the advice of his favourite philosopher and drinking companion, Sid, whose answer to any metaphysical conundrum was, ‘Don’t fuck about, just get on with it.’ So Bill had.
Bill was pleased to see Lucy was actually eating something at last; not a lot, but something.
‘Right about now I would normally light up my umpteenth fag of the day,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you? I’d light my pipe, but it makes me cough. You go ahead.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ve given them up. I can’t really afford them and it’s a crutch I’m trying to do without. I’m done with crutches, or at least I’m trying to be.’
‘Brave you,’ said Bill. ‘It’s not easy breaking with the past. Or the habits of the past, I should say.’
Looking out of the window, he saw the sun had come out. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s take that dog of yours for a walk. Do us both good to get outside for a bit.’
Lucy, startled, sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t go out much. I don’t really like leaving the house.’
Bill smiled at her and said, ‘Come on, let’s give those nosy neighbours something to twitch their curtains at.’
Lucy laughed, suddenly relaxing. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Let’s take Clive for a walk in the park. There’s a small one not far up the road. He’ll love it.’
The park turned out to be a few trees dotted around a set of swings and other rusting metal constructions for children to play on. The place had an air of municipal desolation. It was clearly uncared for and used mostly by rebellious youths as a hangout when all else failed. The one small shelter had no roof and showed the usual signs of unimaginative vandalism.
‘What they don’t smash they write ‘fuck’ on,’ said Lucy. ‘Sad, really. This could be a nice place if it was planted up and looked after.’
‘You sound like someone who likes the countryside.’
‘We had a big garden and our house was on the edge of the countryside, so there was horse riding and the like. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I do miss it a bit now, I suppose. I certainly didn’t expect to end up here, that
’s for sure.’
They walked side by side like prisoners in an exercise yard, with slow, even strides that made talking easy. They walked and talked while Clive had a mad half hour chasing nothing at all as fast as he could go.
‘One thing I would like to ask,’ said Bill. ‘No need to answer if you don’t want to.’
Lucy looked at him warily and said, ‘Go on.’
‘Why ‘Clive’?’
Lucy laughed. ‘My father’s name. I grew up hearing ‘Stop that, Lucy!’, ‘Come here, Lucy!’, and ‘Be quiet, Lucy!’ So when my therapist suggested I get a dog, I thought it would do me good to be able to say things like ‘Get down, Clive!’, ‘Stop barking, Clive!’, and ‘Don’t shit there, Clive!’
Bill’s turn to laugh now. They continued to walk slowly beside each other, their shoulders occasionally touching, like conspirators in a film. Eventually, one happy dog and two slightly less-troubled people walked back to the small house together.
Like every antiques dealer or trader, Bill kept a small stash separate from his spending money just in case he saw a bargain. With this in mind, he said to Lucy, ‘Let me take you out to dinner. Where would you like to go?’
Suddenly she looked troubled again. ‘I really can’t. I hate going out when it gets dark. Please, let me cook something.’
Thinking of the dry cheese and stale bread they’d had for lunch, Bill asked, ‘How about a takeaway? Something foreign. We don’t get foreign in Somerset. Well, not London foreign, anyway.’
Lucy thought for a bit. ‘Do you like curry? There’s a place just on the High Street. I’ve had them deliver stuff before and it’s really nice. Not too hot if you don’t like that sort of thing.’ She looked at him and smiled. ‘They do chips.’
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