Frankie Styne & the Silver Man (14 page)

‘We'll get up to there.' A hundred yards or so ahead was the solid shape of a builder's skip. Perhaps someone had died. It seemed to be full of furniture and household debris: several ripped suitcases, wads of damp papers and books, a tangle of sodden curtains, carpet sweepers, a bicycle, rusting cans of paint, broken chairs, cupboard doors, washing line, an electric fire, an ironing board. And right on top, towards the middle of the pile, was perched a 24-inch television set. She couldn't quite believe it. She stood, stock still, staring. Then she wrapped Jim in her coat, set him on the verge, hoisted herself into the skip.

‘What a Lining! Nearly new!' she called back, pulling it bit by bit towards the edge. The plug was still attached. ‘Even if there is something wrong, it can probably be fixed! Getting it down is the problem . . .' She lowered herself carefully, reached up. She slid her arms around its base, braced herself and took the weight gradually onto her chest. Only then it occurred to her how difficult it would be to get home.

‘Could hide it in one of these gardens—get you home first—come back later—' she twisted her neck to see Jim—‘or even tomorrow.' The balanced TV careened suddenly forwards then and slammed into her chest, knocking her to the ground. A second after impact the screen shattered, the sound of it muffled by the bulk of the set and the grass verge beneath, and Jim began to cry. His foot was caught beneath her shoulder.

By nine o'clock the Three Compasses had lost its transitory trade and settled down at about half full. Frank had drunk two singles and two doubles and was playing darts with Brian Farrar, whom the others were avoiding. Brian, Frank thought, as he watched him eyeing up the board, was very much an instance of the grown ugly. Examining his features carefully and using some imagination it was possible to see that once he could have been a good-looking child. The proportions were large, like the rest of him, but near perfect, the nose straight and sculpted. But whereas many of the drinkers in the Three Compasses suffered from excrescences of flesh, Brian suffered from spareness. The planes of his face were flat and blank, the lips were thin, the eyes blood rimmed. He looked, Frank thought, as if he might be a copy of a human being: technically perfect, but in some deadly way inanimate. Everything about him spelled spite. Two lines crossed his forehead, deepening.

‘Christ!' he spat as his first dart clattered down the face of the board. ‘Fuck!' as the second fastened itself outside the circle. When the last dropped as well, he turned to Frank and said, ‘Drink?'

‘Scotch. Thanks.' Frank thought how he could all too easily win the contest and that wouldn't be a good idea with Brian the way he was. He moved to follow him to the bar, but Brian barked, ‘Stay here, man. Here.' He thrust a pint-mug of beer in Frank's direction. ‘Better for you.'

Frank squared up to the board. The mug was uncomfortably heavy, and there was nowhere close by to put it except the floor. He felt Brian's gaze, huge and malevolent, as a thin stream of beer ran over the mug's rim onto the Three Compasses' well-trodden carpet.

‘You're spilling it,' Brian said, as Frank put his lips to the rim of the glass. It was foul; Frank marvelled at the quantity of it drunk, every night, in the Three Compasses and all the pubs in town. He noticed a tremor in his hands. It should, he hoped, help him to miss. But all the same the first dart landed respectably in the doubles.

‘Seen the paper?' he found himself saying, turning to Brian, swallowing another mouthful of beer as he forced his eyes to look into those of the other man.

Brian tipped his head back and drained his mug before replying. ‘No. Drink up. I want to get pissed.'

Frank drank as much as he could bear, flung the other two darts at the board, managed to drain the rest. ‘My round,' he said, without daring to look at the score.

‘No,' said Brian, taking the glass. ‘You haven't marked up the score,' he said when he returned.

Frank pulled his darts from the board and secretly glanced at his watch as he chalked the figures up: almost three quarters of an hour to go. He gulped some beer.

‘Shit!' said Brian. Veins stood out on his neck. ‘Fucking shit!' he glanced sidelong at Frank, who hated him and also hated himself. Any moment, the situation could explode. There was nothing to do but drink the beer, even before Brian made him. He swallowed and swallowed. It was, he sensed, some way of identifying with Brian, mollifying him by doing the same. And drinking seemed to slow down time, to postpone the inevitable. He knew that the third dart would miss too; he knew that Brian knew it, and that no expletive would be big enough. But drinking also prolonged each moment into a sort of agony, and suddenly the Three Compasses' stinking urinals seemed an attractive proposition.

‘Going for a piss,' he said, turning his back on Brian and walking across the bar, under the television and into the gents, still holding the empty mug.

No one else was there. The dribble of water seemed inordinately peaceful, almost pastoral. Frank sighed and placed the mug on the ledge of the small window, which was glazed in wired glass. A tiny sliver at the top formed an opening light, which was propped wide for ventilation—not enough, however, to cope with the stench of the blocked toilet in the only cubicle. Never mind, thought Frank, as he unzipped himself. At least he'd escaped and it was a real relief . . . The door banged, and Brian was beside him.

Frank stared fixedly at his own urine, willing it to flow for ever.

Brian said, ‘You married, Frank?'

‘No,' he replied.

‘Don't.'

Frank noticed that Brian's piss was a different colour from his. Paler, but also slightly cloudy. It stopped and then started again.

Brian said, ‘I'm in real trouble, mate. Real trouble. Social Services, bitch. And the thing is, will she stand behind me? That's the nub of it.'

‘Wh—' Frank began tentatively. He registered that this was a different Brian; that he was now at least temporarily safe. But what hit him with greater force was that Brian would appear to have been able to get a woman: get
married.
Always he'd assumed that the men who came here were like him in that respect. Brian was an ugly man—grown ugly, rather than born, but ugly nonetheless. And there seemed little doubt that his inside was at least as bad as his outside. Both of them had finished, but stood there, staring at the wall.

‘Don't ask,' said Brian. ‘Just don't ask. I'm just telling you. That's why I can't hit the board. I'm going home.'

Frank zipped himself up and waited a few minutes after Brian's departure before stepping back into the bar. Numbers one and two turned to face him as he emerged.

‘Here,' said number one. ‘What happened?'

‘Nothing,' Frank said. The pair of them looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and respect.

‘Probably go home and slap up the wife,' said number one.

Number two's head was in his hands. His elbow slipped. His breath rattled. All the lights went suddenly on. The barman slipped from behind the counter and moved from table to table collecting glasses, and Frank set out for Onley Street.

‘Last time I go there,' he muttered to himself. He had been very scared of Brian. Not just for himself, but for his plan as well. The plan protected him, but he in turn had to protect
it
 . . . It felt almost beyond him. A mission.

As he turned into the street he saw the girl from next door, hurrying from the other end. It was an odd time of night to be out with a baby.

‘Hello!' he called. ‘Okay?' She said nothing. Was his speech slurred? Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe she was deaf and dumb. Or plain rude. She slipped straight into her house; she must have had the keys ready in her hand.

‘Bitch,' he muttered. You should watch out, he thought, with people like me about! It tickled him.

A corner of the picture of what would happen to Katie Rumbold had come loose and folded over. He stuck it back. He took a pill—just one, because of the drink—and went straight to bed. He was reading
No Forgiveness,
one of his best, according to fans.

Dear Mr Styne,

I've written to you before. Every one of your books is better than the last. I got my girl Laura to read
No Forgiveness,
that bit on page 233, well she wouldn't and so I read it aloud and she was SICK. Right there and then. I can't describe things the way you do, but I thought she was going to choke. Her face went bright red and her eyes watered and then out it came. Strong stuff! Keep it up, Mr Styne.

Indeed he would. Dr Villarossa would be present at the birth, and at the death as well. She would wear an oyster-coloured linen suit by Chanel and fine red leather gloves, when she came to claim her own.

Liz took Jim's foot gently in her hands and tried to feel through the softness for the bones. The minute toes with their soft crescent nails poked from a bag of flesh which obscured everything from the ankle down. At every touch the cry came again. With it, his face burst into angry life, and Liz felt as if she were grasping an electric fence; again and again the expectation of its shock, worse each time until she could no longer bear the nausea it produced. After each wail his face closed down again. It was as if pain has summoned him from somewhere very far away, and when it was over he went back.

‘Is that the way we could talk?' she said, scared. There was no answer. There never would be. Very gently she stroked the foot. Again, he cried. She held Jim still and stared out of the uncurtained bedroom window, fixing her eyes on the smallest star she could see, until it stopped.

‘Oh, what do you want me to do . . .' She could hear nothing except his breathing. She set him to feed. He sucked hungrily, but the damaged foot, poking out of the bundle she'd wrapped him in, haunted the edges of her sight. Her voice, low before, rose: ‘Do you want me to take you to the hospital?' If she touched the foot he would cry, signalling no. But that would be cheating.

‘They'd ask all kinds of questions,' she said. ‘They would say it was my fault.' That, too, was cheating. ‘It was my fault,' she admitted, ‘but they might separate us.' His lips were folded around her nipple. The foot stuck out. His eyes were closing. ‘I'll take you if it gets any worse,' she whispered. She removed him carefully, pulled back the covers, set him on the bed and switched out the light. It was so good to lie down. Her ears strained in the silence. It seemed as enormous as the sky. She was relieved to hear Alice's voice.

‘Don't—please—tonight I just can't.' There were creaks and shiftings, but the reply was inaudible.

‘Did
she
ever not want to?' said Alice. The light went on. Tom didn't answer. Liz saw him lying clenched, foetal, with his eyes shut.

‘Please. I need to know what she's like.' Alice began to cry.

‘I can't say,' said Tom. ‘I've forgotten.'

There were no curtains in Liz's room. Out of doors looked lighter by far than in the room where everything was black and double black in the corners.

‘Okay,' said Tom. ‘Her name is Andrea. Does that make you feel better?'

‘Where does she live?' An answer came, but couldn't be heard.

‘What's her phone number?'

The voices grew quieter and quieter. Liz didn't want them to stop. While she waited for the next bit, she searched the sky for the star she had looked at before. Come on, she urged, there must be something more. But everything was quiet, terribly quiet, next door. She wanted to squeeze Jim to her, but she was worried about hurting the foot.

‘At least the skin isn't broken,' she whispered. Skin, she dimly remembered from school, was an organ. It died and grew, replacing itself and filling the air with sloughed-off cells. It healed. It was what separated a person off from the air, the world, the universe, but only just. Once she'd cut herself and had spray-on skin from a can. Suppose skin was see-through, like cling-film, or glass. Or that people were born with one skin and that was it. Like clothes, or brains, it had to last you. From day one it was shedding itself, gradually becoming even thinner.

Knowing this, everyone would go about their business very carefully, avoiding washing, wind, sun, chemicals and so on. The parks would be full of mothers yelling at their kids: ‘Don't do that! You're wasting your skin! They don't grow on trees, you know!' Some places would wear out first: the tops of your legs, the palms of your hands. Not even men would wear trousers. Eventually, it wouldn't be so much a skin as a net. Like nylon stockings with ladders. It wouldn't last anything like as long as you lived. Once it was gone, you had to go on without, all red and wet. You started another phase, with nothing between you and the world. Some people were impatient to begin, picked the last scraps away. But most were afraid and hung out as long as they possibly could.

‘I'm really sorry, Silly-boy,' she whispered as she turned on her side to sleep.

Not Much To Ask

‘You might get jealous,' Annie Purvis said to her husband, Sim. Sim always made himself clear: what he wanted, and what he felt. He was persistent without being unduly aggressive. He was rarely unreasonable: the easiest thing, often, was to agree. But having a baby was not something which she could do just to keep the peace.

‘I don't expect so,' he said icily. ‘It's not as if I see much of you anyway . . .'

They started and failed to make love. She knew right from the beginning that without the spermicide she'd be as dry as paper. She couldn't find any enthusiasm. It was almost midnight.

‘You'll have to make your mind up soon. Time passes.' He made a sound, half grunt half laugh.

I feel so exhausted, now, she thought; how would I be able to manage? Of course, he thinks—

‘Listen,' he said. ‘Do something for me, will you? This is scarcely the best time to talk about it, is it? Will you please try to get home early tomorrow, just for once? We can eat together, talk before we're tired. Doesn't seem much to ask. After all, if I wanted to spend all my time on my own, I wouldn't have got married.

‘It's an instinct,' he said, loudly because he was breathing out a sigh, ‘to breed. I work with the evidence of that every day . . .'

‘It's not so simple for me—'

He grunted again, this time dismissive. ‘Will you?' he said.

‘What?'

‘Get home early?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I promise.'

Often I forget, she thought, but I do love him. She was more in the other world, the complex nightmare of work, than in the simpler one of home. Sometimes they were hard to separate. Sometimes it seemed that one was mixed into the other, suspended like mud in water. You would need a filter, or a great deal of time, for it to settle out. Which she didn't have.

Brian Farrar had come to see her that morning. Close shaven, his jeans and sweatshirt freshly ironed and exuding a withering smell of soap, he stood in the doorway and glared at her.

‘Hello, Brian, where's Jackie?' she'd said.

‘Busy.' He sat in one of the two low chairs, leaning right back into it, but keeping his legs close, the way women often do.

‘That's a shame, Brian, because really I need to discuss things with you both together. Have you been to see—?'

‘No. I went once. But I don't want to go there with everyone thinking I've done it.'

That's not a point in your favour, she thought. Nor is the way you won't look at me. Be fair, she'd told herself; how would I feel?
I wouldn't be in this position,
she thought.

‘Well, Brian. You seem a bit nervous. I am too, you know.'

She sat down opposite him.

‘You're being paid for it,' said Brian.

‘Tea?' He nodded. She hadn't wanted to get it for him. ‘Just help yourself.' He didn't move.

‘Jackie seems very happy with you, Brian,' she began. ‘Have you lived together with someone before?'

‘Why?' he said, jerking forwards, elbows on knees. ‘Don't beat about the fucking bush.'

‘All right. Brian, we're still worried about Clare. There are signs that strongly indicate—'

‘Has she said anything happened?' asked Brian.

‘Not in so many words.'

‘That's because it hasn't,' Brian said, settling back in the chair again. His knees moved fractionally further apart. ‘You busybodies, you should leave us alone.'

‘Brian, our responsibility is to protect Clare. I would like you to help us with it.'

‘Maybe it's someone at the school,' he said carelessly. ‘But most likely it's no one at all. You lot are obsessed.'

‘One way you could help is by understanding why we want to keep an eye on Clare.'

‘So you can brainwash her?'

‘So that she can feel safe to say anything she wants to.'
You did it,
Annie Purvis's guts began to scream.

‘If I say no, you'll think it's me.'

You can't actually say no, she thought; not yet, not to this. But you can make Jackie—‘Why would you want to say no, Brian?'

‘Because I know what happens. It'd break Jackie's heart. Have you thought of that?'

‘What do you think happens, Brian?' she asked.

‘You take the kid into a home.'

‘Actually, Brian, we really try not to—'

‘And the bloke that's suspected gets arrested and locked up, and probably knifed by the cons.' I wish someone else would do this, she thought. I hate him: his threats, his big hands around a little arm, his fist in Jackie's face—he won't speak now, but
then
he shouts. He doesn't deserve me being fair. Why is he my responsibility? I don't mind caring for Jackie and Clare, but can't someone else deal with
him? No one's a monster
, she had reminded herself, and continued, ‘We do try to help everyone concerned, including the—'

‘Even if he didn't do it.'

‘Did you do it, Brian?'

‘Do you think I did?' She waited a moment before speaking. Took in his freshly shaved jaw and pink cheeks, the red-rimmed eyes that would not quite meet hers.

‘I have to say I think it's possible. The only way I'd be sure would be if you told me, or if Clare did. And then we could get down to the business of carefully deciding what to do for the best. We'll have to do that anyway, but of course it's best to do it knowing the full facts.'

‘She won't.' Brian was very sure of this. Without her noticing it, his legs had slipped and splayed apart; they were completely relaxed now, held in position only by the limits of the fabric that covered them.

‘Will you, Brian?'

‘What?'

‘Tell me.'

‘You've made your mind up in any case,' he said, and she had. But what they had wouldn't stand up well in court; she knew he knew.

‘Do what you like,' he said. ‘I can tell you one thing: Jackie'll stand by me.'

I hope she doesn't, Mrs Purvis thought as the door slammed, ineffectually because of the heavy closing mechanism fitted at the top. She fished inside her blouse to scratch at her chest. The skin there felt greasy and bumped, adolescent. She saw herself and Brian, competing for Jackie's assent to their version of events. Brian offered marriage and a flat. She offered grief.

She ate a chicken mayonnaise sandwich at her desk, and sucked a carton of orange juice. Her diary was open in front of her, each day divided vertically into two sections: on the left hand side in red appointments and things to do; on the right, in blue, things that should have been done by other people to be checked on if she got the time. At the end of her day she would cross off what had been achieved and carry over the rest. Meanwhile she ate with total absorption, ignoring the ringing of her phone and those at other empty desks, oblivious to colleagues rushing in and out. When she was finished, she brushed the crumbs from her diary and tried Liz's number, but the low tone indicated that there was nothing there, still. She made a note to deal with it on Friday and went to see Mandy.

‘Something I think about all this,' Mandy said, leaning back in her chair. Her tights were laddered right up the front. ‘Here, before it gets to the courts and all that, a man has to prove his innocence to the women. It's a very unusual situation, perhaps the only one of its kind. A tiny loophole. Because most of the time it's the other way round. Look at rape. Look at what they call crimes of passion. Frankly, I wish we had wider powers.' Being not married made it easier, Annie suspected, for Mandy to think and say things like that.

‘You don't look well. You want to be careful,' Mandy said, just as she was leaving. ‘Strikes me you should cut out anything you can. What are you doing with Jim Meredith and his Mum?'

‘I think—'

‘She's a sensible young woman. It's tough, but they'll be all right. Wouldn't the clinic be good enough, just to keep an eye? Just a thought,' Mandy said. It was difficult to tell when she was making a suggestion and when she was pulling rank.

That afternoon, Annie Purvis visited the George Meridel Centre. It had only been open a few months, and she had it in mind for Jim. One of the mothers had told her how it had transformed her life. She had thought there was nothing that could be done for her little girl, Sue, who cried constantly, stared at the light and then banged her head if it was turned out. But now she brought her to the Centre three times a week and there was clear progress. There was no such thing as a non-communicating child, the head mistress said. It was just a question of patiently working out
how
to communicate. At home, the family had a rota of twenty-eight people, friends and friends of friends and kids from the grammar school. Someone came every morning and every afternoon for a couple of hours to play with the child. A newsletter was posted to all of them once a week, so that everyone knew everything that had happened and they all worked together. They were going to have a party on Sue's birthday.

‘We might have a child with some kind of special needs,' Annie Purvis muttered at Sim, moving to free the chain which was biting into her neck. ‘I know it's hypocritical, but I don't think I could take that.' She heaved over to face him, looked briefly at him in the dark before closing her own eyes. She could guess at his expression from the overall shapes: cautious, rather stern. He was her first love and there had been no others and when they first met they sometimes made love three times a day. What had happened to them? The bulk of him was comforting. Right now, the bulk of him, touching her here and there, was also frightening. He so clearly knew what he wanted. She closed her eyes.

‘You know that's really not a thing worth worrying about,' he said softly. The cross skated lightly down the curve of her breast. ‘The chance is very small. There are tests.' Outside, a gust of wind dragged cans along the street.

‘One of my clients,' she said after a while, ‘Only a girl, still. Supposed to be at risk, but I don't think so. Her baby looks fine, ever so pretty in fact, but he's quiet, and slow; he's never going to grow up, or not much, mentally. It's one of those things they don't really understand but give a name to all the same.'

‘You shouldn't be doing that job,' Sim said, sleepily and automatically.

Yet she did know some things that she wanted. For instance, she wanted Liz and Jim not merely to survive, to pass muster as most do; she wanted them to have everything imaginable. She wanted Liz to be happier than other people, even than herself. Liz and Jim made her think of a painting. Something from another age, done carefully in oils. It grew in the velour of dark behind her eyes, slowly, the way a photograph does in the developing tray. The faces were luminous. The tones of flesh pulled themselves out of the surrounding darkness, a background thick with the dirt of time which stole colour yet bestowed depth. The woman sat, the baby lay across her lap. The baby was naked, male, the small genitals painted as carefully as the features of the face. Both faces were empty of conflict: the child gazed in blank fulfilment at the woman, the woman looked out, her eyes seeing and blind at the same time. She seemed to have no need of the viewer.

Liz and Jim glistened from the dark velvet. Two lucky charms to set against the world—Annie had been watching them for months, and now she plucked them up to hang around her neck. She didn't wake Sim and tell him but she made a conditional kind of decision: if they're all right, she thought, we can go ahead.