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A SHOUT IN THE STREET
The heavy coffin decked with bouquets, wreaths and roses twined into
the form of an alto saxophone slid into the long, polished hearse
which turned with difficulty in the narrow cul-de-sac, and proceeded
with stately slowness up the cobbles of Christchurch Street. Once
out of town, it
gathered pace, followed by the little convoy of mourners’ cars.
Fifty were already at the crematorium, loitering in the sunshine,
exchanging sad reflections and niceties about the deceased. The
marching band, a bass drum, a trombone, a trumpet, a tuba, a
clarinette, an alto sax and a banjo, waited at the entrance and,
playing St James Infirmary, preceded the undertaker. Six men,
including his three sons, carried Charlie inside and placed him on
the chrome and leather bier. A framed picture of him smiling and
holding his instrument was prominently displayed. All the seats were
filled. Everyone had an order of service whose front page showed
another image of the musician. The celebrant took his place at the
podium as due quiet descended and tissues wiped away a few tears.
The ceremony over, the band reassembled and led the way, vigorously
rendering Down By The Riverside. Little by little the
gathering thinned as people took to their cars to head to The
Plough.
“Are you coming?” said Thorn.
He was a small man of sixty-four whose hair was still thick but
white. He’d once been a regular in the hills, taking to the Lakes
with his Wainwright or heading up Fairsnape on a Sunday
morning, but his fondness for beer, curry and the comfort of pubs
had fattened and slowed him,
and recently his knees had begun to fail. Not being able to
walk far and finding climbs impossible, he’d retrieved compensation
in more ale, food and conviviality. His question was directed to
Lane, who was ten years older but carried no excess. Six feet one,
broad and heavily-built, he’d been a rugby player in his youth, a
coach when he could no longer compete, and in
old age, a dedicated swimmer and gym habitué. He completed
fifty lengths four mornings a week and two thorough workouts on
non-swimming days, leaving him one rest day a week. They knew one
another, as they’d known Charlie, through Labour Party activism. As
a student, Thorn had tilted to the Socialist Workers’ Party,
believing Labour was irredeemably careerist. An uprising of the
workers was needed if people were going to take things into their
own hands; but bitter
experience of Tory government, both in its simple form and the more
complicated of convinced Tories colonising the Labour leadership,
and most of all the dismal, interminable dancing on the head of a
pin which preoccupied the Marxist left, had brought him to the view
that change couldn’t come unless most people would vote for it and
the best policy was to choose the least worst option. Lane, on the
other hand, had never dallied with Marxism, finding its creed of
inevitability at odds with his belief in moral responsibility. He
too had concluded politics was a matter of the best of a bad lot.
“No, Tony. I’ve got to get off, I’m afraid. Have one for me.
Good to see you and take care of yourself.”
The wish, usually a formality, registered as sincere. Thorn shook
Lane’s hand vigorously and looked into his brown eyes.
“Great to see you, Pete. We’ve both lost a friend, haven’t
we? And we knew what a lovely man Charlie was.”
“He was, Tony. He was.”
Lane set off down the long avenue to Longridge Road where he had
thought to catch the Number One to the bus station, but the sky
being clear, the air mild and his legs feeling strong, he decided to
walk. The one negative was belittled Ribbleton Lane, especially the
row of depreciated
terraces, the grubby curtains, the buddleia sprouting from the
cracks in the mortar, the general air of hopelessness. Had he taken
the opposite direction, he would have passed through genteel, urbane
Grimsargh with its poised stone detacheds, groomed lawns and swanky
cars. The thought of these disparate arenas, no more than a few
miles apart, ruffled his calm.
He turned left and advanced with a regular stride but was aware that
his feet no longer obeyed his brain as a decade earlier. He was
seven years younger than Charlie. Fitter, but who could say? From
his memories, slowly, negatively there emerged an episode he wished
he could forget, or better, had never happened. He was puzzled why
it seemed to dominate, why the recollections of joyous, carefree
times seemed to struggle to displace it.
The house he moved into in 1988 was the best he could afford after
his divorce, occasioned by his wife, a secretary with a building
firm, falling for its owner who had recently separated from his
first wife, and moving into his five-bedroom place in Penwortham. He
and Debbie had lived in a terrace in Lostock Hall which sold quickly
but cheaply leaving him with five hundred as a deposit on a
two-bedroom in Meath Road. He had a second-hand oven, a bed, a sofa,
one knife, one fork, one spoon, one plate, a kettle and a hundred
and fifty books. It was at this time he met Charlie who lived in
Osborne Street with his wife Janice and their
daughter, Billie, his sons having flown. Their house, a
shrine to jazz musicians and radicals, was seldom without visitors
and served as the committee rooms at elections. Often invited,
always to Charlie’s curry evenings when, from the little kitchen, he
would serve capacious helpings of his own-recipe kormas, madrases,
biryanis, baltis, masalas, vindaloos, saags, accompanied by ginger
relish, onion and tomato and torn expanses of naan, Peter would call
in when he was at a loose end, sure of a welcome and conversation.
It was on one of these occasions Janice invited him into the back
room where she was hosting a woman, who worked full-time for the
constituency Labour Party.
Val Slinger could have been taken for a man. Her short hair was
brushed harshly from a left-side parting; she wore rough denim
jeans, heavy boots and a thick shirt of the kind which might keep a
bricklayer warm in January. She was sitting in the armchair in front
of the uncurtained window which gave out ono the little yard where
Peter could see his friends’ cat curled in feline self-possession on
the six-foot wall. Leaning forward, a tense and wary expression on
her brow, combined with the sharp pull on her cigarette, gave him at
once the sense that he’d wandered into a scene of difficulty and
conflict.
“Hello, Val. Okay?”
She blew out a great, expanding, grey cloud which lingered in the
room’s still, warm air and responded with the most minimal nod. The
two women exchanged glances. Janice turned away, moved in the
direction of the kitchen and pausing asked:
“Fancy a brew, Peter?”
“No, I’ll not stay, as you’re busy.”
“We’re not busy,” said Janice. “Val popped in for a chat.
Decaff?”
“Thanks.”
Val stubbed her end in the red, metal ashtray brought home from
The Blue Bell or The Continental and clasped her face in
her hands.
“Tired?” said Lane, sitting in the armchair opposite.
“Exhausted.”
“How are things going?”
Though he posed the question innocently, he knew there were
accusations and counter-accusations involving expenses, the purchase
of multiple copies of Tribune, unpaid bills for the premises
and irregularities in candidates’ electoral expenditure. Val had
been appointed some two years earlier to bring order to the
constituency party’s affairs. He’d been on the periphery of the
debate: on the one hand those who claimed it would be wasteful and
lay management
preferable, on the other the proponents of a modern approach who
believed the appointment
of a seasoned professional who came with steaming references
from a party in the south east would stiffen the party’s operation
and assist success in elections.
“They wanted rid of her,” he heard Bill McEvoy remark after
the interviews.
“You’re cynical to yer marrer, Bill,” Ted Douglas replied.
“You’d doubt yer own mother if she said you were born on a Sunday.”
“I were born on a Thursday. Can’t yer see through her? What’s
sent ‘er up ‘ere? I tell yer, they wanted rid. She’s artificial as
the plastic daffodils in my dentist’s waiting-room.”
Prior to her takeover, the running of matters was amateur and
dependent on the small inputs of many. Her plan, outlined boldly
before the appointment panel, was to bring everything together, to
oversee it all herself, to dispense with the help of volunteers and
turn the operation slick and professional. The chaos, whispered by
some, denied by many, came to light when the constituency secretary
discovered thousands of unsold papers hidden in a cupboard. A quick
investigation revealed the energy bill was unpaid, the printer owed
more than a thousand for flyers, and a stack of ten-pound notes in
Val’s desk drawer. Her suspension had divided the party.
“They’re out to get me. I’ve done nothing wrong. The party
was a mess when I arrived. I’ve turned it round, but they’ve got it
in for me.”
Janice brought the mug and a little, yellow plate of custard creams
and digestives.
Though he gave no credence to her story, he nodded as he thanked his
host.
“Charlie not around?”
“He’s got a gig in Stockport. Ken’s driving.”
“I wish I’d known. I might have gone with ‘em. What’s the
line-up?”
He hoped he could turn the conversation to music till he had time to
cool and drink his tea. Janice sat to his left on a straight-backed
chair. The women exchanged another conspiratorial glance.
“Do you want to sit here, Janice?”
“Not at all. I’m fine. It’s a scratch band, Ken and I think
Sammy on drums and Ged on bass.”
“Ah, sounds good.”
The liquid was too hot to rest comfortably in his mouth. He gave it
three hearty puffs.
“I was saying they’re out to get me, Janice. There’s no
chance of fair treatment.”
“Yeah.”
It was no great leap of insight or sudden inspiration to see what
was going on between the women. What was running through Lane’s mind
was whether Charlie knew and if not, whether he should say
something. Two ideas contended: it wasn’t his business and Charlie
was a friend. Did friendship imply a moral duty to let him know?
Would it be morally lacking to chat to him and say nothing? Yet
wasn’t it also a moral duty not to interfere? This petty battle made
his heart speed slightly and his palms grow damp.
He swallowed the hot beverage in three mouthfuls.
“Better love you and leave you.”
“You’ve only just arrived, Peter.”
“Yes, no offence, Janice, but I was hoping to catch Charlie,
and I’m intruding.”
“Not at all.”
Val, her face pale and set as a blancmange, stared at her friend who
appeared moderately embarrassed. Peter took his leave promptly and
during the half-hour’s walk home ruminated on the ruinous condition
of the party, Val’s role and what he now knew about Janice.
Harry Slinger was prone to refer to himself as a “hairy-arsed
bricklayer”. Born and raised in the East End, Labour was as much his
culture as jellied eels. It was a bright day in May when he joined a
demonstration against trade union legislation and the streets being
full, many he knew present, the atmosphere more carnivalesque than
confrontational, his mood was high, his sense of possibility acute
and his sensual nature animated. The young woman who materialised
beside him might have been sixteen: her face radiated innocence, her
little body gave off energy and health. He smiled broadly and said:
“Couldn’t be a better day for it, eh?”
“No, very nice,” she said and took out a cigarette.
They shuffled and ambled together with the crowd for half a mile as
he thought all the while of a good pub to slip away to.
“Tell you what, I could murder a pint of Tex Ritter. Fancy
something?”
In the Sherlock Holmes she sat with her back to the window as
he went to the bar.
“You in the party then, girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Union?”
“USDAW.”
“Where you work, then?”
“In a shop.”
It turned out they lived no more than a mile apart, began to see one
another frequently and at length set up in a flat in Hackney at poor
man’s rent because it belonged to his brother. Shortly after they
moved in, he came home from the building site, dirty, cold and
hungry, to find a Jaeger-Le Coultre clock on the mantelpiece.
“Where’d you get that?”
“I bought it.”
“Looks a fancy bit of kit to me. How much that cost, yer?”
“Not much.”
They sat at their little table to eat sausage, mash and peas but his
questions brought him no nearer to how much she paid, or where. He
let her go to bed, paused an hour, checked and finding her asleep,
went through her bag and her pockets. The receipt was for a hundred
and fifty. He held it between the thumb and forefinger of his right
hand as if it might speak. Should he wake her? A hundred and fifty.
More than he earned in three weeks. For a clock. When his heart
calmed, he resolved the best was to speak to her in the morning.
Should he keep the receipt? A sudden sense of guilt spread through
him. He had no right to interrogate her belongings. But he needed to
know and she wouldn’t say. Yet why should she? Perhaps he should
leave, hand the keys back to Michael, refuse to see her again. But
he loved her, he thought. He returned the receipt and decided
honesty was the only answer. In the morning.
They were short of time, as ever.
“I found the receipt in your bag, Val?” he said, taking the
toast from the grill.
“Don’t look in my bag.”
“No, only you wouldn’t tell me.”
“What?”
“Where you got the clock.”
“I bought it.”
“A hundred and fifty quid.”
The blade of the white-handled knife slid through the corner of the
softened slab of butter and
the melting pyramid, before he had time to slap it on the
slice, plopped with a tiny but audible splat on the tiles as he
watched her swiftly gather her belongings and leave. From the
oblong, blue box on the side he pulled a cheap, flimsy tissue and on
his hands and knees, dabbed and wiped, creating a dirty, fatty swirl
which he tried to remove with a squirt of washing-up liquid and a
rub of the dish cloth. The floor was in need of a clean. In the
corner, beneath the water heater, the mop stood lazily leaning,
untouched for weeks. Not now. The dry toast had cooled. He would
have it out with her after work. He pulled on his heavy boots whose
treads bore yesterday’s arid mud, unhooked his thick jacket from
behind the door and headed for the bus.
She was absent for three days.
The reconciliation included no conversation. He grew almost
accustomed to the appearance of new items: an antique, sixteen-piece
Crown Devon dinner service; a brass, palm tree, Hollywood vintage
floor lamp; Horrockses Egyptian cotton sheets; a Bohemia crystal,
hand-cut whiskey decanter. Though a permanent tension invaded him
and lodged in his chest, as if a band of some heavy substance was
weighing on his heart and lungs, he accepted the impossibility of
discussion. This disturbing aspect of her behaviour aside, they were
not snarling enemies, and their shared politics bound them in a way
he found cosy. They could always find smooth waters and pleasant
weather in their disdain for the Tories.
Harry was a willing volunteer, enjoying most of all, pushing
leaflets through letterboxes. At six, in the weeks before an
election, he would take his bundle of five hundred, jam them into
the canvas bag slung over his right shoulder and set off along
Powerscroft Road. The sense of involvement, the notion that some of
the flyers might encourage a few voters, that he, like thousands of
others, might make some small difference, gladdened him. Val got
herself elected as Assistant Constituency Secretary, but place
didn’t attract him and the vigour of being outdoors and doing
something physical suited his constitution.
“You should stand for the council,” he said to her one
evening.
“I’m not interested,” she said.
He took a swig of the chilled, bitter beer which slid caressingly
down his throat irritated by the gritty dust of the building site
and turned to look at her reading through a set of papers next to
him on the newly-arrived white, leather sofa.
“Why not? You think about politics night and day.”
“But being a councillor isn’t right for me.”
“An M.P. then.”
“No, I’m a behind the scenes woman. A position in the party,
that’s what I want.”
“What position?”
“Whatever I can get.”
It puzzled him, but he didn’t ponder it. It was a mystery. Leave her
to it.
The two-bedroom, modern house in Harlow whose kitchen-diner and
front window gave out on enough garden to provide a sense of
something to care for, was bought with a deposit provided from the
premature estate of Harry’s childless uncle, who climbed the stairs
of a Routemaster, lit up and keeled over. Harry added a neat,
tiled-roof porch, boarded the loft and built fitted wardrobes for
the main bedroom. His trowel was never at rest. The Labour Party
provided them with a warm circle of friends and acquaintances. The
nettle among the snowdrops was Val’s spider-like silence about
money. He allowed it to be a little mire on the edge of his
paradise, until, fifteen years established, picking his clothes from
the bedroom floor, he glimpsed what he took to be the corner of a
note and pulling away from the wall the chest of drawers bought at
auction for a thousand when they moved in, he discovered twenty
pounds. Perhaps he dropped it, or Val. Yet how would it get there? A
sense of dread mingled with a fierce desire to know made him pull
open the top, right-hand drawer. It was apparently packed with a wad
of white, black, blue and green cotton knickers. He pulled them out
in two handfuls and found the rear jammed with bundles of twenties,
held by thick elastic bands.
His resolution to confront her dissolved as quickly as it arose.
Though he accused himself of cowardice, he feared her disappearance,
temporary or worse.
“Know what,” he said casually as they sat watching the news,
“I found twenty quid on the bedroom floor.”
“Should be more careful with your money.”
“Behind the chest of drawers.” He watched her intently, but
she betrayed no emotion. “I had to pull it out to grab it. Funny how
it got there.”
“Mmm.”
Five months later he came home at six to find her packing their
belongings in boxes.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re leaving?”
“Val, what are you talking about.”
“Never mind. Get packing.”
The following day, they were in a Bedford van heading north.
“What’s in Preston.”
“I know somebody.”
“Who?”
“Someone I met at a conference.”
The van occupied bullying space in the cul-de-sac.
“We can’t leave it there,” said Harry. “People want to park
their cars.”
The odour of well-cooked curry stole from the house. Janice opened
and guided them along the little hallway where Charlie’s old racer
leaned, to the warm rear room where the table was set for four.
Harry was reassured by the straightforward, friendly couple and
hungry from having driven for five hours without pause, relished the
spiced chicken, the crispy poppadums, the rice boiled and rinsed so
each grain had its own identity, the garlic- infused naan, the
cooling yogurt and cucumber. He learned they were to spend the night
there and the next day move into a flat owned by one of Charlie’s
jazz mates.
“What’s happened to you is unbelievable,” said Janice,
pouring more white for Val.
“It’s what people can be like.”
“I know, but all the work you’ve done. To accuse you like
that.”
Conscious of the speeding of his heart, Harry wiped his mouth on the
red, paper serviette and attended closely.
“That’s why we had to get away. You can’t work with people
who’ve got it in for you.”
“But why?” said Charlie.
“Sheer ill-will,” said Val.
The explosion that would ensue if Harry intervened kept him silent,
but his mind was aflame with indignation as images of the good
people they’d known, the fine work they’d done together and the
saving friendship they’d offered battled with his disdain for Val’s
story.
“Surely they couldn’t provide any evidence,” said Charlie.
“Who needs evidence. Anyway, I wouldn’t put it past them to
invent it.”
“Thankfully, you got away before the police got involved,”
said Janice.
When all four were in bed, Harry leaned close and whispered in his
wife’s left ear:
“What the hell are you talking about, Val.”
“Oh, shut up and leave me alone.”
“Accused of what?”
She turned over in a single, swift move and pushing her face to
within a feather’s width of his, hissed through clenched teeth:
“Just shut your mouth. You want to stay out of the nick, do
as I say.”
“The nick? Me?”
“You’re involved, mister. Up to your eyeballs. I got us out.
Now, shut it.”
In the neighbouring room, Charlie propped himself on his left elbow.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“She was framed.”
“Everyone against her, the whole constituency? I don’t
believe it.”
“Are you saying she’s lying?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t hang together, Janice. We hardly know
her. You spent a weekend in her company at a conference. And did you
see him? He looked dumbstruck and didn’t say a word to back her up.”
“They picked on her because she’s bisexual.”
“What?”
“That’s why they wanted her out.”
“Does Harry know?”
“Maybe. Go to sleep, Charlie.”
On the second floor of a large house in Victoria Parade, the flat
was more spacious than the house they’d left behind. Harry humped
the boxes up two flights as Val unpacked them without a word or a
smile. The van emptied and returned to the hirer’s depot, Harry
called into the Lane Ends on his return and swallowed
a rapid three pints which loosened his tongue and gave a reckless
fillip to his confidence.
“Well,” he said, leaning against the lounge door frame, “what
the fuck have you been up to, Val?”
“I’m accused of embezzling five grand from the constituency,
that’s what, matey,” she spat at him, pointing her stiff index.
“They agreed not to involve the police if I disappeared and promised
to pay it back. So here we are. Now, get on with it.”
“Five grand?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Did you?”
“I never touched a penny.”
“But you agreed to give it back.”
“I don’t fancy a holiday in Holloway.”
The image of the wads of notes in the drawer came back to him and he
knew his wife was a liar and a thief. During the hours that
followed, wild ideas of escape infested. He would flee to London,
ask Michael to put him up, get work, start again. He would knock on
Charlie and Janice’s door and tell them the truth. He would get a
flight to Berlin. There was good money to be had in the building
trade. But these fantasied schemes were tugged by the guys which
pinned him to her, and he couldn’t clear his mind and return to what
he was before he loved her.
The site agent sent Harry in the direction of the foreman
bricklayer, a muscular little man whose blonde mane was brushed back
and who whistled as he plied his trowel with the swift expertise of
an artist.
“I was told to come and speak to you,” said Harry.
A pristine brick in his left hand, the trowel in his right, the
chief smiled and nodded.
“Can you throw a brick in?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Hey, Jimmy, show this lad what he’s got to do,” and with
that he set his instrument on the half-built wall and extended his
hand. “Jack Castle, everyone calls me Bouncy. Good luck, lad.”
The routine work of speculative house building came easily to Harry,
who could comfortably set a thousand a day. The money was good and
the camaraderie a great relief from his intimate troubles. They
moved into a house on Brackenbury Road, rented from a complaisant
Asian and had far more
space than they needed.
“We could sublet,” said Val.
“Are we allowed to?”
“Who’d know?”
“Best not draw attention to ourselves.”
Though she disdained his timidity, Val complied. Little by little
she was building her reputation in the local party.
Though Harry’s surprise at the frequency and length of
Janice’s visits diminished with familiarity, he found himself
climbing on his Honda CB750, looking forward to a beer on his sofa,
his boots off, his feet up on the coffee table only for his
anticipation to be subverted by the vision of his wife and friend,
installed in the lounge, engaged in conspiratorial conversation
himself an uncomfortable intruder. One evening, having removed his
boots at the back door and walked the hallway in stockinged feet, he
halted as he heard Val’s voice.
“It’s best we keep it between you and me. You know what
people are like. No smoke and all that.”
“You’re right, but Charlie keeps pestering.”
“Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?”
“And I’m married to him, unfortunately.”
“I’ve got Harry round my neck. He drives me mad.”
“What else are men for but to drive women mad?”
He padded silently to the kitchen, opened and slammed the door and
whistled all the way.
“Hello, you two. Setting the world to rights?”
“Can you sit in the kitchen for a bit, we’ve got something to
discuss?”
“Discuss away. I need the sofa, my back’s in revolt.”
A terrible thought came to grip him: could he still have sex with
her? Out of her presence, in cold reason, he was able to see the
impossibility; but she undressed as he watched from beneath the
duvet. If the night was warm, she slipped in naked and the
invitation was irresistible. Simultaneously, she seemed to welcome
and repel him and he could arrive at no resolution. One day blended
into another. His curious, troubling state became ordinary, though
he said to himself it was no more than a five percent deficit. In
himself, he was fine. If only.
Janice, constant party veteran, respected for hard work, modesty,
gentle efficiency and organisation assisted her friend in gaining
trust, securing place and advancing to her aim. Prompted by Val, who
convinced her it was the best way to run the constituency party,
Janice argued in one tedious, over-long meeting after another for
the recruitment of a full-time worker. At the decisive gathering
both Charlie and Harry voted against.
Several months later, Peter was at home in the evening, listening to
a Chick Corea record Charlie had lent him. Though he had begun to
build a library of cassettes and a few CDs, he retained his
turntable and collection of two hundred or so vinyls and it was his
delight to close the blinds which were installed when he moved in,
pour a glass, ignite the gas fire and set the needle. The white
phone which he kept on the window ledge began to sound and he
resisted answering.
“Hello.”
“Pete? Charlie. Can you get round here?”
“What’s up?”
“Bit of a problem. Harry’s outside my house. Tanked up and
going mad.”
Turning the corner, Peter saw the bricklayer standing in the middle
of the road, looking up at the illuminated bedroom.
“Val, get out here,” he shouted. “Send my fucking woman down
here.”
In number twelve, Val and Janice were in bed together, Charlie was
at the foot of the stairs and Billie weeping in the back room, the
portrait of the singer after whom she was named behind her.
“Val,” called Charlie, in as calm a voice as he could muster,
“I think you should talk to Harry. He’s in a state. Come down and
see him.”
From upstairs there came no response. Charlie lifted the key from
the hand-made, blue bowl on the bookcase, slipped it into his left
pocket and went out, pulling the door behind him. Looking to his
left, he saw Peter at the end of the street. Harry looked Charlie in
the eye for a second then switched his attention once more to the
bedroom.
“Val,” he yelled in a voice coarse with anger and
desperation.
“She won’t come down,” said Charlie.
“Tell your wife to send her out. It’s your house. She’s
coming home with me.”
“I can’t tell my wife what to do Harry and you can’t make Val
go with you.”
“What the fuck’s going on?”
“They’re lovers, Harry. We’re out of the picture.”
In the intervening seconds, Peter had approached. His great bulk in
his black overcoat seemed to blend with the dark. He stepped from
the pavement and put his left arm around Harry’s shoulder. The three
stood in silence till Peter gently encouraged Harry away by light
pressure.
“What the fuck,” said the drunk as he allowed himself to be
guided.
“Come to mine, Harry. We’ll have a chat a coffee.”
Val moved in with Janice and Charlie, who was expelled from the
marital bedroom to the third space, barely big enough for a single
bed and a chest of drawers. Harry’s late-night, legless appearances
grew less frequent.
“The atmosphere is dreadful,” said Charlie to Peter one night
he was playing a gig in Lancaster and his friend had come to listen.
“It’s getting me down, but Janice looks like death. She’s smoking
like a kipper and hitting the booze.”
“Are you going to sell up?”
“What about Billie? It’s her home. She grew up there. And I’m
not moving out. It’s my home too.”
The ambulance turned slowly into the little street and parked with
two wheels on the pavement. The door was open for the paramedics who
gathered what they needed and mounted quickly the steep stairs, the
young woman carrying the oxygen cylinder, ahead of the older man. In
the bedroom, they found Janice in jeans and a white blouse,
crosswise on the bed, apparently unconscious and Val at the foot
end, puffing anxiously.
“I know it’s your house, said the young professional,” but
we’ve got oxygen here. Can you put out your cigarette?”
Val stubbed the filter in a yellow mug on the windowsill. The pair
went silently to work .
“Has she taken anything? Aspirin?”
“No. What is it?”
“We can’t say. We’ll have to get her to hospital.”
There was great urgency as well as efficiency in getting the sick
woman into the ambulance. Charlie offered to help negotiate the
stretcher downstairs, but the two were expert. Val insisted on
travelling in the ambulance. Charlie followed in his old
Astra with Billie beside him.
“Will she die, dad ?”
“They’ll do all they can to save her,” he said, thinking of
the long hours and modest pay of ambulance crews.
The young woman drove, the blue light twitching in the darkness, the
siren picked up by strangers’ ears who registered vaguely an
emergency which might one day be them. To Val’s insistent
questioning the balding man responded guardedly: it was for the
hospital doctors to diagnose, but he was convinced before they had
travelled half a mile, she would be dead on arrival.
Among his small stack of CDs, Peter had one of Charlie’s core band,
The Quintet, named after his liking for Magritte, as they
were four. It was recorded live in Clitheroe. Peter set it playing,
prepared a ham sandwich on the two slices of brown which hadn’t yet
developed little patches of green, poured a glass of IPA and sat to
listen. After Janice’s death and the shaming and disappearance of
Val, there’d been many good times: Ronnie Scott’s to hear Kenny
Garett; hundreds of gigs where the little crowd exploded with
appreciative applause, whoops and whistles; late-night curries at
East is East; long, going-nowhere conversations about the
falling off of everything. Billie studied fine art at Central St
Martin’s and moved in with a violinist from the BBC symphony, his
sons married and gave him five grandchildren. It was a life. He
wanted to feel it was worth commemorating, but the stubborn image of
Val lodged and returned him, again and again, to puzzlement at her
motivation. Surely, she was s small and passing figure.
He hadn’t gone to The Plough because he didn’t want to engage
in platitudes. He
needed to be alone to remember his friendship. He had nothing to
say. The CD ended. He stayed in the chair looking out into the
darkness to which soon he would be consigned and falling asleep, his
head nodding forward, the empty glass slipping from him, he dreamed
of a speeding ambulance carrying a jazz band playing high-energy
music, a coffin opened to reveal a fully-clothed woman with a
cigarette in her mouth and an inordinately long-queue waiting to be
admitted to a crowded little house where curry was being served on
paper plates to huddled dozens whose loud hum of excited
conversation defied his effort to hear what was being said.
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