Nineteen Seventy-Four (16 page)

“Would you like some tea bringing?” Mrs White asked me as she primped the flowers on the bedside table.

“No, thank you,” I said, my eyes on Mrs Dawson.

Mrs White seized my flowers and went over to the sink in the corner. “Well then, I’ll just put these in some water for you and then I’ll be out of your way.”

“Thanks,” I said, thinking fuck.

Mrs Dawson was staring straight at me, through me.

Mrs White finished filling the vase full of water.

“It’s Eric, dear. Your nephew,” she said, turning to me and whispering, “Don’t worry. It sometimes takes her a little while to come round. She was the same with your uncle and his friends last night.”

Mrs White put the vase of fresh flowers on the bedside table. “Well, that’s me finished. I’ll be in the conservatory if you need anything. Bye-bye for now,” she smiled, giving me a wink as she closed the door.

The room was suddenly unbearably full of Radio 2.

Unbearably hot.

My father gone.

I walked over to the window. The catch had been painted over. I ran a finger along the paintwork.

“It’s locked.”

I turned around. Mrs Dawson was sitting upright in her bed.

“I see,” I said.

I stood there by the window, my whole body wet beneath my clothes.

Mrs Dawson reached over to the bedside table and switched off the radio.

“Who are you?”

“Edward Dunford.”

“And why are you here, Mr Edward Dunford?”

“I’m a journalist.”

“So you’ve been telling dear Mrs White more lies?”

“Privilege of the profession.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I received an anonymous tip.”

“I suppose I should feel flattered, to be the subject of an anonymous tip,” said Mrs Dawson, pushing her hair back behind her ears. “It sounds so very glamorous, don’t you think?”

“Like a racehorse,” I said, thinking of BJ.

Mrs Marjorie Dawson smiled and said, “So why are you interested in an old nag like me, Mr Edward Dunford?”

“My colleague, Barry Gannon, came to see you last Sunday. Do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“You said his life was in danger.”

“Did I really? I say so many things.” Mrs Dawson leant over and smelt the flowers I had brought her.

“He was killed on Sunday night.”

Mrs Dawson looked up from the flowers, her eyes wet and fading.

“And you came to tell me this?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Who can tell what I’m supposed to know these days?”

I looked out across the grounds at the bare trees, their cold shadows waning with the sunshine.

“Why did you tell him his life was in danger?”

“He was asking reckless things about reckless men.”

“What kind of things? About your husband?”

Mrs Dawson smiled sadly. “Mr Dunford, my husband may be many things but reckless isn’t one of them.”

“What did you talk about then?”

“Mutual friends, architecture, sport, that kind of thing.” A tear slid down her cheek on to her neck.

“Sport?”

“Rugby League, would you believe?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I’m not a fan so it was all a bit one-sided.”

“Donald Foster’s a fan, isn’t he?”

“Really? I thought it was the wife.” Another tear.

“His wife?”

“Really, Mr Dunford, here we go again. Reckless talk costs lives.”

I turned back to the window.

A blue and white police car was coming up the gravel drive.

“Shit.”

Eraser?

I looked at my father’s watch.

It had been just over forty minutes since I’d phoned.

Not Eraser?

I walked over to the door.

“You’re leaving so soon?”

“I’m afraid the police are here. They may want to talk to you about Barry Gannon.”

“Not again?” sighed Mrs Dawson.

“Again? What do you mean again?”

There was a stampede of boots and shouts up the stairs.

“I really think you should be going,” said Mrs Dawson.

The door burst open.

“Yep, I really think you should be going,” said the first policeman through the door.

The one with the beard.

Not Fraser.

Fuck Fraser.

“I thought we’d told you about bothering people who don’t want bothering,” said the other, shorter officer.

There were just the two of them, but the room felt as though it was full of men in black uniforms, with iron-shod boots and truncheons in their hands.

The short one stepped towards me.

“Here comes a copper to chop off your head.”

A sharp pain from a kick to my ankle brought me falling to my knees.

I sprawled across the carpet, my eyes blinking wet with burning red tears, trying to stand.

A pair of white tights walked towards me.

“You lying bastard,” hissed Mrs White.

A big pair of feet led her away.

“You’re dead,” whispered the bearded officer, seizing me by my hair and dragging me from the room.

I looked back at the bed, my scalp red raw.

Mrs Dawson was lying on her side, her back to the door, the radio on loud.

The door shut.

The room was gone.

Big monkey hands pinched me hard under the armpits, the smaller claws still at the roots of my hair.

I saw a huge radiator, the paint flaking in strips.

Fuck
, white warm wool into black yellow pain.

I was at the top of the stairs, my shoes struggling to stay on my feet.

Then I was holding on to the banister halfway down.

Fuck
, I’d lost the breath from my chest and my ribs.

And then I was at the foot of the stairs, trying to stand, one hand on the bottom step, one upon my chest.

Fuck
, my scalp red yellow black pain.

Then all the heat was gone and there was only cold air and bits of the gravel drive in my palms.

Fuck
, my back.

And then we were all running together down the drive.

Fuck
, my head into the green Viva door.

Then they were touching my cock, their hands in my pockets, making me giggle and squirm.

Fuck
, big leather hands squeezing my face into yellow red pain.

And then they were opening the door of my car, holding my hand out.

Fuck, fuck, fuck
. Then black.

Yellow light.

Who will love our Little Red Eddie?

Yellow light again.

“Oh, thank heavens for that.”

My mother’s pink face, shaking from side to side.

“What happened love?”

Two tall black figures behind her, like huge crows.

“Eddie, love?”

A yellow room full of blacks and blues.

“You’re in Pinderfields Casualty,” said a man’s deep voice from the black beyond.

There was something at the end of my arm.

“Can you feel anything?”

A big fat bandaged hand at the end of my arm.

“Careful, love,” said my mother, a gentle brown hand upon my cheek.

Yellow light, black flashes.

“They know who I am! They know where we live!”

“Best leave him for now,” said another man.

Black flash.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

“Don’t be worrying about me, love.”

A taxi, Paki radio talk and the scent of pines.

I stared down at my white right hand.

“What time is it?”

“Just gone three.”

“Wednesday?”

“Yes, love. Wednesday.”

Out the window, Wakefield city centre slugging past.

“What happened Mum?”

“I don’t know love.”

“Who called you?”

“Called me? It was me that found you.”

“Where?”

My mother, her face to the window, sniffing.

“In the drive.”

“What happened to the car?”

“I found you in the car. You were on the back seat.”

“Mum…”

“Covered in blood.”

“Mum…”

“Just lying there.”

“Please…”

“I thought you were bloody dead.” She was crying.

I stared down at my white right hand, the stink of the ban dages stronger than the cab.

“What about the police?”

“The ambulance driver called them. He took one look at you and reported it.”

My mother put her hand on my good arm, eye to eye:

“Who did this to you love?”

My cold right hand throbbed to the pulse beneath the bandages.

“I don’t know.”

Back home, Wesley Street, Ossett.

The taxi door slammed shut behind me.

I jumped.

There were brown smears on the Viva’s passenger door.

My mother was coming up the drive behind me, closing her bag.

I put my left hand into my right pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t be daft, lad.”

“Mum, please.”

“You’re not fit.”

“Mum, stop it.”

“No, you stop it. Don’t do this to me.”

She made a grab for the car keys.

“Mum!”

“I hate you for this, Edward.”

I reversed out the drive, tears and black flashes. My mother, standing in the drive, watching me go.

The one-armed driver.

Red light, green light, amber light, red.

Crying in the Redbeck car park.

Black pain, white pain, yellow pain, more.

Room 27, untouched.

One hand cupping cold water over my head.

A face in the mirror running brown with old blood.

Room 27, all blood.

Twenty minutes later, on the slow road to Fitzwilliam.

Driving with one hand on the rearview mirror, eating the lid off a bottle of paracetamol, gobbling six to null the pain.

Fitzwilliam looming, a dirty brown mining town.

My fat white right hand upon the steering wheel, left hand through my pockets. My one good hand and my teeth unfolding a torn-out page from the Redbeck’s phone book:

Ashworth, D., 69 Newstead View, Fitzwilliam
.

Circled and underlined.

FUCK THE IRA
was sprayed on the iron bridge into town.

“Aye-up lads. Where’s Newstead View?”

Three teenage boys in big green trousers, sharing a cigarette, spitting big pink-streaked chunks of phlegm at a bus shelter window.

They said, “You what?”

“Newstead View?”

“Right by offy. Then left.”

“Ta very much.”

“I should think so.”

I struggled to wind up my window and stalled as I drove off, the three big green trousers waving me off with a big pink shower and two forked fingers all round.

Under my bandages, four fingers smashed into one.

Right at the off-licence, then left on to Newstead View.

I pulled over and switched off the engine.

Newstead View was a single line of terraces looking out on to dirty moorland. Ponies grazed between rusting tractors and piles of scrap metal. A pack of dogs chased a plastic shopping bag up and down the road. Somewhere babies were crying.

I felt around inside my jacket pockets.

I took out my pen, my stomach empty, my eyes filling.

I stared at the white right hand that wouldn’t close, at the white right hand that wouldn’t write.

The pen rolled slowly off the bandages and on to the floor of the car.

69 Newstead View, a neat garden and flaking window frames.

TV lights on.

Knock, knock.

I switched on the Philips Pocket Memo in my right jacket pocket with my left hand.

“Hello. My name is Edward Dunford.”

“Yes?” said a prematurely grey woman through bucked teeth and an Irish accent.

“Is your James home?”

Hands stuffed deep into a blue housecoat, she said, “You’re the one from the Post aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“The one that’s been talking to Terry Jones?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want with our Jimmy?”

“Just a quick chat, that’s all.”

“He had enough of a chat with the police. He doesn’t need to keep going over it. Specially with likes of…”

I reached out to steady myself, grabbing at the frame of the front door.

“You been in some kind of accident have you?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed and mumbled, “You’d better come in and sit yourself down. You don’t look right clever.”

Mrs Ashworth shooed me into the front room and a chair too close to the fire.

“Jimmy! There’s that gentleman from the
Post
here to see you.”

My left cheek already burning, I heard two loud thumps from the room up above.

Mrs Ashworth switched off the TV, plunging the room into an orange darkness. “You should have been here earlier.”

“Why?”

“Well I didn’t see it myself like, but they said the place was swarming with police.”

“When?”

“About five this morning.”

“Where?” I asked, staring through the gloom at a school photo on top of the TV, a long-haired youth smirking back at me, the knot in his tie as big as his face.

“Here. This street.”

“Five o’clock this morning?”

“Yeah, five. No-one knows what it were about, but everyone reckons it were…”

“Shut up Mam!”

Jimmy Ashworth was standing in the doorway in an old school shirt and purple tracksuit bottoms.

“Ah, you’re up. Cup of tea?” said his mother.

I said, “Please.”

“Yeah,” said the youth.

Mrs Ashworth walked out of the room half backwards, mut tering.

The boy sat down on the floor, his back against the sofa, flicking the lank strands of hair from his eyes.

“Jimmy Ashworth?”

He nodded. “You’re bloke what spoke to Terry?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Terry said there might be some brass for us?”

“Could be.” I was desperate to change seats.

Jimmy Ashworth reached up behind him to a packet of ciga rettes on the arm of the sofa. The packet fell on to the carpet and he took out a cigarette.

I sat forward and said quietly, “You want to tell me what happened?”

“What happened to your hand?” said Jimmy, lighting up.

“I got it caught in a car door. What about your eye?”