She asks, “Did MacArthur say that?”
Her mum sighs; her eyelids flutter. “Al,” she says, “get me one of my new blue pills. The helicopter ones. Would you?”
What year is this? Al runs a hand over her body. Has she breasts now, or just the promise of them? There is no point, when it comes to your own flesh, trying to knead it into precision; flesh doesn’t yield that kind of answer. She pours the hot milk onto a spoonful of instant coffee. Then she is too weak to do any more, and she sits down.
“They used to disappear you,” Emmie says. “For a laugh. Sometimes you’d be gone half an hour. I’d say, here, Morris, where’s Alison? That’s my only daughter you’ve disappeared. If she don’t come back I’ll sue you.”
“And did I?” she says. “Come back?”
“Oh yes. Else I really would. I’d have seen him in court. And Morris knew it. There was all sorts of money tied up in you. Trouble is with me I couldn’t keep me books straight.”
“You didn’t have books. You had a vase.”
“I couldn’t keep me vase straight. Bob Fox was always dipping in it. And then the boys fell to quarrelling about who was to go first at you. MacArthur put down his deposit, but oops! You see, I had borrowed money off Morris Warren. Morris said money owed counts for more than money down. And he wouldn’t leave it alone, I’m owed this, I’m owed that.”
Al says, “He’s still the same.”
“But then Keith Capstick got in anyway, before either of them could do the business, on account of your turning to him after the dog bite. The ones that weren’t there when the dog broke in, the ones that didn’t witness it, they couldn’t understand the way you was wiv Keith, making up to him and kissing him and all. So there was bound to be disputes. So then they was mired in a three-way fight. And MacArthur come first versus Keith, and Keith got a pasting.
“But Morris, he just maintained the same, Keith Capstick owes me money, Mac owes me, he said Bill Wagstaffe owed him, I could never see how that was, but I suppose it was a bet on the horses and boys will be boys. Morris said, I will go to my grave buried with my little black book saying who owes me what, I will never rest till I get my money’s worth, dead or alive.”
“I wish I’d known,” Alison says. “If I’d known all he wanted was a refund, I could have written him a cheque myself.”
“And Aitkenside,” her mum says, “was overseeing it all. Thank the Lord for Donnie Aitkenside. He was advising me, like. But then how was I supposed to make a living, after you was offering all-in for a shilling? I even lent you my nightdress, and that’s all the thanks I get.”
“You said I was a good kid.”
“When?”
“A while back.”
“I changed my mind,” said Em, sulking.
Her coffee is cold, and she raises her head to the tap-tap-tap. Mr. Fox, are you there? Are your friends with you? Click by click, she lifts the kitchen blind. Dawn: there is a dazing light, a bar of thunderous black across the sky: hail-stones are falling. These summers since the millennium have been all the same: days of clammy unnatural heat, sapping to the will. She puts her fingers against her forehead and finds her skin damp, but she couldn’t say whether she’s hot or cold. She needs a hot drink, to banish that deep internal quaking; I could try again, she thinks, with the kettle and a teabag. Will the police come back? She hears the neighbours chanting Out out out: a swell of distant voices, like a choir.
“Jesus,” Colette said. “Where did you get this clapped-out dodgem car?”
“My garage lent it. It’s only temporary. A courtesy car.” Gavin looked at her out of the tail of his eye. “You look done in,” he said.
“Done in,” she said. “Tired out.”
“Washed up,” Gavin offered.
“Look, I realize this isn’t convenient for you. I promise I won’t be in your way. I just need a few hours to catch up on my sleep, then I can think straight. I’ll soon put my life to rights. I’m by no means penniless, I just need to work out how to extricate myself from my ties with Alison. I may need to see a solicitor.”
“Oh. She in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Small businesses going under all over the show,” Gavin said. “Easy to run up a tax bill. They claim there’s not a recession, but I dunno.”
“What about you, did you get fixed up?”
“Bit of contract work. Take it as it comes. Here and there. As and when.”
“Hand to mouth,” she said.
For a while they drove in silence. The suburbs were beginning to wake up. “What about Zoë?” Colette said. “What will she think about me turning up like this?”
“She’ll understand. She knows we used to be related.”
“Related? If that’s what you call it.”
“Married is a relation, isn’t it? I mean, you’re related to your wife?”
“She’s got no cause for jealousy. I shall make that perfectly clear. So don’t worry. It’s just for the emergency. It’s strictly temporary. I’ll make sure she knows that. I’ll soon be out of her way.”
“Anyway,” her mum says, “Gloria got sawed once too often. And then they had to get rid of her, didn’t they? It wasn’t even on the premises, that was the big nuisance of it. They had to fetch her back as consignments. But then the dogs came in handy, didn’t they? But Pete said, you got to watch them dogs now, Keith. You got to watch dogs, once they get a taste for human flesh. Which was proved, of course. With the dog flying out at you. And then the way he cleaned his dish, when you served him up a slice of Keith.”
She leaves the house now, young Alison, she leaves the house at Aldershot, kicking open the back door that is swollen with damp. MacArthur sees her go. He winks at her. It has rained that day and the ground is soft underfoot as she makes her way towards the lockup garages.
Emmie says, “Where there is waste ground, there is outbuildings. It stands to reason. That’s where the boys used to keep their knocked-off ciggies and their bottles of spirits, they was always bringing in spirits by the case—oops, I think I’ve spoken out of turn now, it’s a good thing MacArthur’s not around, he’d have walloped me one, do me a favour and don’t mention to the boys it was me what told you.”
“I’m not the police,” Al says.
“Police? That’s a laugh. They was all in on it, only you don’t want to mention it to MacArthur. I’ll only get my eye blacked and my teef knocked out—not that I have any teef, but I wouldn’t like a smack in the gums. Police used to come round, saying I’m after the whereabouts of MacArthur, I’m attempting to locate a gypsy fella name of Pete, they was having a laugh, they weren’t locating, all they was wanting was a rolled-up fiver in their top pocket and a glass of whisky and lemonade, and if I couldn’t oblige them, on account of I’d spent me last fiver and you’d drunk the lemonade, they’d say, well now, Mrs. Cheetham, well now, I’ll just get my leg over before I depart your premises.”
She walks past the van, young Alison, the van where Gloria rests in pieces: past the dog run, where Harry, Blighto and Serene lie dreaming; past the empty chicken runs, where the chickens are all dead because Pikey Pete has wrung their necks. Past the caravan with its blacked-out windows: back to the hut where she lies and howls. She peeps in, she sees herself, lying bleeding onto newspapers they’ve put down: it will be hygienic, Aitkenside says, because we can burn them once she’s clotted.
Aitkenside says, you’d better stay off school, till it scabs over. We don’t want questions asked, into our private business. If they say anything to you, say you was trying to jump barbed wire, right? Say you did it scrambling over broken glass.
She lies, moaning and thrashing. They have turned her over on her back now. She screams out: if anybody asks I’m sixteen, right? No, officer sir, my mummy is not at home. No officer sir, I have never seen this man before. No, officer, sir, I don’t know that man either. No sir, for certain I never saw a head in a bath, but if I do I will be faithfully sure to come to the station and tel
l you.
She hears the men saying, we said she’d get a lesson, she’s had one now.
The telephone again. She won’t answer. She has lowered the kitchen blind, in case despite the new locks the police have installed the neighbours are so furious as to swarm over the side gate. Colette was right, she thinks; those gates are no good, really, but I don’t think she was serious when she mentioned getting barbed wire.
She goes upstairs. The door of Colette’s room stands open. The room is tidy, as you would expect; and Colette, before leaving, has stripped the bed. She lifts the lid of the laundry basket. Colette has left her soiled sheets behind; she stirs them, but finds nothing else, not a single item of hers. She opens the wardrobe doors. Colette’s clothes hang like a rack of phantoms.
They are in Windsor, at the Harte and Garter. It is summer, they are younger; it is seven years ago; an era has passed. They are drinking coffee. She plays with the paper straws with the sugar in. She tells Colette, a man called M will enter your life.
At Whitton, Colette’s hand reached out in the darkness of the communal hall; accurately, she found the light switch at the foot of the stairs. As if I’d never been away, she thought. In seven years they say every cell of your body is renewed; she looked around her and remarked, the same is not true of gloss paintwork.
She walked upstairs ahead of Gavin, to her ex-front door. He reached around her to put the key in the lock; his body touched hers, his forearm brushed her upper arm.
“Sorry,” she said. She inched aside, shrinking herself, folding her arms across her chest.
“No, my fault,” he said.
She held her breath as she stepped in. Would Zoë, like Alison, be one of those people who fills up the rooms with her scent, a person who is present even when she’s absent, who sprays the sheets with rose or lavender water and who burns expensive oils in every room? She stood, inhaling. But the air was lifeless, a little stale. If it hadn’t been such a wet morning, she would have hurried to open all the windows.
She put her bag down and turned to Gavin, questioning.
“Didn’t I say? She’s away.”
“Oh. On a shoot?”
“Shoot?” Gavin said, “What do you mean?”
“I thought she was a model?”
“Oh, yes. That. I thought you meant like on safari.”
“So is she?”
“Could be,” Gavin said, nodding judiciously.
She noticed that he had placed his car magazines on a low table in a very tidy pile. Other than that, there was very little change from the room she remembered. I’d have thought he’d have redecorated, in all these years, she said to herself. I’d have thought she’d have wanted to put her stamp on it. I’d have thought she’d throw all my stuff out—everything I chose—and do a make-over. Tears pricked her eyes. It would have made her feel lonely, rejected, if she’d come back and found it all changed, but that fact that it was all the same made her feel somehow … futile.
“I suppose you’ll want the bathroom, Gav,” she said. “You’ll have to get off to work.”
“Oh no. I can work from home today. Make sure you’re all right. We can go out for a bite of lunch if you feel up to it later. We could go for a walk in the park.”
Her face was astonished. “A what, Gavin? Did you say a walk in the park?”
“I’ve forgotten what you like,” he said, shuffling his feet.
In the corner of Colette’s room, where the air is turbulent and thickening, there arises a little pink felt lady whom Al has not seen since she was a child.
“Ah, who called me back?” says Mrs. McGibbet.
And she says, “I did, Alison. I need your help.”
Mrs. McGibbet shifts on the floor, as if uncomfortable.
“Are you still looking for your boy Brendan? If you help me, I’ll swear I’ll find him for you.”
A tear creeps out of Mrs. McGibbet’s eye, and makes its way slowly down her parchment cheek. And immediately a little toy car materializes by her left foot. Alison doesn’t trust herself to pick it up, to handle it. She doesn’t like apports. Start on that business, and you’ll find some joker trying to force a grand piano through from the other side, pulling and tugging at the curve of space__time, wiping his boots on your carpet and crying, “Whew! Blimey! Left hand down a bit, steady how she goes!” As a child, of course, she had played with Brendan’s toys. But in those days she didn’t know how one thing led to another.
“I don’t know how many doors I’ve knocked on,” says Mrs. McGibbet. “I’ve tramped the streets. I’ve visited the door of every psychic and Sensitive from here to Aberdeen, and attended their churches though my priest told me I must not. And never a sighting of Brendan since the circus fellas put him in a box. He says, ‘Mam, it is the dream of every boy to join the circus, for hasn’t my sister Gloria a costume with spangles? And such a thing was never seen in these parts.’ And that was true. And I didn’t care to spell out to him the true nature of her employment. So he was taken on as box boy.”
“They put him in a box?”
“And fastened round the chain. And box boy will burst out, they said. A roll on the drums. The audience agog. The breath bated. The box rocking. And then nothing. It ceases to rock. The man MacArthur comes with his boot, oi, box boy!”
“Was MacArthur in the circus?”
“There wasn’t a thing that MacArthur wasn’t in. He was in the army. He was in the jail. He was in the horse game, and the fight game, and the box game. And he comes with his boot and kicks the side of the box. But poor Brendan, he makes not a murmur; and the box, not an inch does it shift. And a deadly silence falls. So then they look at each other, at a loss. Says Aitkenside, Morris, have you ever had this happen before? Says Keith Capstick, we’d better open it up, me old china. Morris Warren protests at the likely damage to his special box, but they come with a lever and a bar. They pull out the nails with pliers and they prize off the lid. But when they open it up, my poor son Brendan is gone.”
“That’s a terrible story, Mrs. McGibbet. Didn’t they get the police?”
“The police? Them? They’d be laughed out of the place. The police are the king of boxes. It is well known in every nation that people who trouble them disappear.”
“That’s true,” Alison said. “You’ve only to watch the news.”
“I would help you out,” the little lady said, “with your memorizing and all, but I’m sure the topic of MacArthur’s eye is not a topic for decent people. I’m sure I wasn’t looking, though I do recall the man MacArthur lying drunk as a lord on your mammy’s couch, for though I might have shifted his head to see if Brendan was under the cushion, if he then fell back into his stupor I barely recall. And if the man they call Capstick was incapable too, lying with his head under the table, I’m sure I was too busy to notice. I can’t recall at all you stooping over them vermin and patting their pockets, hoping for a shilling to roll out, for I wouldn’t know where the minimart was or what sort of sweeties you were fond of spending on. Now one or the other might have roared ‘bleeding thief,’ but then it could have been ‘bleeding Keith’ for I can’t claim I was paying attention—and you wouldn’t mention to them, would you, that it was me, McGibbet, that told you nothing at all about it, for I’m in mortal fear of those fiends? I’m sure I wasn’t seeing a little girl with a pair of scissors in her hand, snipping about a man’s private parts. I’m sure I was too busy about my own business to notice whether that was a fork you were carrying, or that was a knife, and whether you had a spoon in your pocket, or whether your mouth was bristling with pins. I’m sure I wouldn’t have known if you were carrying a knitting needle, for there were several on the premises, but I’m sure I was too busy seeking my boy Brendan to know whether you had opened the drawer and took one out. And I wouldn’t say I saw you go down the garden to feed the dogs, neither. If I hadn’t been peeping under the furniture as was my habit, I might have seen a smile on your face and a bowl in your hand, and a trickle of blood runn
ing down each arm. But your age I couldn’t swear to, it was no more than eight years, nine or ten. And I never saw the fella called Capstick run out and collapse on the ground at the side of the house, shouting Ambulance, ambulance! Nor did I see Morris God-curse-him Warren and the other bloody bleeder come up at the trot, his name I don’t suppose would be Aitkenside. I didn’t notice them haul up Capstick by his oxters and dump him in the bath that was kept out on the road in front of your mother’s premises. There was a deal of shouting then, but it was that sort of neighbourhood, so I couldn’t say he was crying out to the whole street, where’s my bollocks, find the fuckers for they can stitch them back on, beg your pardon but that’s the exact truth of what he might have said at the time, if I had been able to hear above the racket. And Morris Warren said something back to him, I dare say, but I wouldn’t like to quote you his words, which were too late I regret my son, for your bollocks are all eaten by the dogs, they cannot sew them back when they are swallered, not to my way of thinking, and to my way of thinking they are swallered good and proper and the dogs have cleaned their bowls. And he, Morris Warren, it’s possible he could not forbear to laugh, for he had told Capstick he should not interfere with your good self without paying money for it, and now you get paid out, he said, and now you get what’s coming to you, the little girl herself pays you out for being a dirty bugger.”