Slow Poison - Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

LUCIFER:     I am angelic: wouldst thou be as I am?

Lord Byron

Stonehouse. January 13th

He parked the Mercedes in The Woolpack car park, near the playing fields, near the hedgehog ditches. The Post Office clock was slow. The Mercedes digital never was. 3:17.

There was a low red brick wall surrounding the car park on three sides. One side ran parallel to another, higher wall that kept the unkempt garden of the Dental Centre in check. He passed the wild garden, its tangle of bramble and shrub frozen hard and iced with remnants of snow. He paused to look in Bellamy’s window. She was not there. He looked over the properties displayed on the softboard screens. Photographs prefixed by pounds - like convicts with their prison numbers. He walked on toward the war memorial, toward Mawhood’s, each step of the way punctuated by an invisible hurdle of telling fragrance. One step; raw pork, chittlins, faggots. Twelve steps; salt and vinegar, patties and chips. Seventeen steps; wood shavings, French polish, linseed. Twenty-four steps; Dettol, glycerine. Thirty steps brought the sheen of loan brochures, the sour cankerous taste of money.

A steam train roared over the railway bridge, its whistle sounding. He was seven again. No - this was now. Yet he caught the scent of childhood, the acrid steam, the breathless anticipation. He was transported. He watched the train roar over the railway bridge, watched it thunder out of sight behind the steep wall that sheltered the Lawn School, shaking at the foundations of the old fleapit cinema, long since a firetrap of a cowboy garage. Once, Snow White had sent him screaming into the nightmare world of Fred and Lenny. They had seen his tears, had discovered a weakness. They would search him out in the light of day.

A steam train. The afternoon shoppers spared the apparition no more than a passing glance. The rare had become the commonplace. British Rail, in a pique of lucrative nostalgia had sent the old LMS trains steaming down the track past all the derelict stations and abandoned halts as far down the line as Temple Mead.

He had made the journey. He had been on the platform when the girl from Tredegar had been pushed by the crowd under the wheels of the outgoing Plymouth express. He could still hear the squeal of the great iron wheels shooting sparks into the cinders as the cord was pulled, could still hear her screams ceasing as the slow decapitation severed the windpipe, the shiver of silence before the gleeful horror of the drunken holidaymakers rose above the whistles and the loudspeaker messages.

The train slid agonisingly slowly out into the bright day, fourteen carriages long. Ripples of knowledge stilled the waves and kisses and Victory V’s. And when the train was gone, there she lay, blood glistening in the sunshine. The late Alice Penn. He watched as the porters covered her with Post Office jute, watched the dark stain appear. Watched as they covered her head - if it was a head - with a large white towel. He remembered her handbag, its contents spilling out across the cinders between the rails, the sailor’s hat, kiss me quick. It lay crumpled and oily. Barry Island held no thrill to equal death. Kiss me. Quick.

Alice lay quiet, while all around her panic and horror spewed forth in realisation. Somewhere on an island in the crowd, John Cobb stared unblinking into a sudden new horizon. Their fingers had touched a moment before, a touch he would never forget. He would always remember too, her shrill, silly voice and her tight-lipped kisses. Did he love her? Did it matter now? Seventeen and he was almost a widower. He would never ever know what he might have regretted. The friends of Alice and John led him away to the Porter’s tea and cigarettes. The boy watched the smoke fill the Porter’s small private booth, watched the silent words cloud the glass, watched the tears falling down and wetting John’s jeans.

The boy watched the drama drift out into the wide sweep of the station forecourt, a tarmacadam beach that inclined toward the bustling Bristol streets. The boy inched his way along the waiting room walls, keeping well away from the platform edge. He tingled all over. With fear and excitement and with sexual awakening. He scraped past tight twill revealing wallets. His flushed cheeks banging handbags with their sticky Coty powder traces, their cruel snap fasteners barely missing his eyes. His delicate fingers came alive in the stifling proximity. He brushed the notes so easily, the coarse watermarks ridged like the hard-baked sand flats of Weston. The preoccupied, pre-journey crowds offered up their bounty on this wide and terrible platform. One pocket, one handbag: a fine beginning.

He wondered how far the train would have to travel to lose the blood that wound around the steam-driven wheels. In the tunnels of the homeward journey his head reeled with the idea. The smell of the hard velour seats mingled with his Mother’s Devon Violet aura. In the tunnels some of the dim bulbs glowed, fixing Mother and Opa in the sepia tones of the sea views that were riveted to the walls of the carriage. The bristling upholstery pressed thrillingly into the backs of his bare legs. He sat there sullen and silent in his wide khaki shorts, his sandals streaked with estuary mud.

The old man had not spoken during the journey. At first he shook his head and muttered his foreign words. The boy heard the one word he knew repeated throughout the rhythm of the wheels on the track. Giselle.

“Opa?”

But his Mother had said, ‘Shh!’ and the old man had not heard him anyway. The boy felt deep into his khaki pockets and could feel the keen edges of the five-pound notes that were folded there. They raced on toward Stonehouse. The marigolds and asters of the interim stations were bright smudges in the frame of the windows against the dum-diddy-dum-diddy-dum of the journey.

‘Bum-Titty-Bum, Bum-Titty-Bum! Bloody bugger off, bloody bugger off, bloody Fred and bloody Len, bloody bugger bloody off!'

He could smell the coal from Vicks yard as Mother, Opa and he walked together from the station, along the cinder path at the foot of the gardens. The creosote dungeon was barely visible as the last threads of sun unravelled behind the beech trees of the copse. Across the water meadow the clump of twisted willows that sheltered Snake Island blackened into grotesque silhouettes in the sunset. On Snake Island someone was being initiated, snake-food berries rubbed along thighs, the slime odour of the brackish water designing goosebumps, tight sacs, and cold hard skin.

The boy, the man, shuddered as the train vanished completely, leaving only the subdued hum of the High Street, thirty years on. He crossed the road, stood before the low wall that bordered the war memorial green. He could see Mawhood’s, but the owners and the name had changed. He had an urge to see the school. The old school. See what else had changed.

The grey iron gates of the playground still stood. Prison bars that stretched from Horsefall’s to the old Secondary Modern outbuildings. The gate was slightly open. The school was closed. He turned up his collar against the biting snowy winds that blew across the playground. He pulled his black kid gloves tight around each finger, flexing the muscles, cracking the knuckles. He looked left and right, and then marched purposefully through, leaving the worst of the limp at the gate.

Horsefall’s red brick isolated block stood in quarantine just inside the gate. He looked through the small dirty windows. He had once sat under this window, behind the girl who looked like Susan Hayward. The chairs and desks were stacked against the far wall. Hundreds of exercise books littered the floor. Janet and John, tattered and torn. There were none of the marks of the vandal, more the traces of someone searching wildly for some long lost phrase or word, each page glanced over and tossed aside in frustration. He thought he could hear the swish of the cane, but it was only a bicycle that passed, breaking the frail membrane of a frozen puddle.

The playground seemed as vast as it had ever been. Against the east wall, under the jam factory bottling plant, stood the Boys’ Lavatory; open at either end and open to the sky, the scrubbed seats one more haven for off-ground tag, above the swirling clouds of Jeyes in the early morning. Shrill sounds had echoed among the planes and sycamores; ‘Wots the time, Mister Wolf? Wots the time, Mister Wolf?’ He had never been ‘It’, had never been caught before the limp. Afterwards, the games had changed. Afterwards, nothing had been quite the same. ‘Wots the time, Mister Wolf?’  Time to kill.   Almost.

He walked on around the block of the main building with its assembly hall and classrooms and cloakrooms and offices. The Glasshouse classrooms opposite the main Cotswold stone block were empty of books and desks, filled instead with builders” sand and tiles and cement. Several twill overalled navvies were drinking tea in Miss Fowler’s old classroom. They looked up as he stepped into the cloakroom between two classrooms. They acknowledged his presence with perfunctory grunts. One of them went as far as a nod. Beard, steel grey eyes, bait. Trim nodded back. He turned and exhaled captured breath with a sigh. He walked back to the main building, to the staff room window. Someone had once brought a kitten to school for Miss Cope’s birthday. It had slept in the staff room window all day, lying in the sun, ignoring the children that stopped to watch it, tapping glass, bringing Miss Fletcher, or one of the others to the window to shoo them away.

He looked into Miss Neale’s classroom. Like Horsefall’s, it too was piled high with the debris of books and posters and broken pencils. There was an old blackboard in one corner covered with chalk markings. The chalky smell hung around the playground. Along the walls of the room, scraps of sum tables still adhered to the fusty paintwork. The Bee Poem had hung there. The bright sunny drawings and the spidery lettering his finest hour and the first days of Fred. The beginning of his bullying epoch. The distinctive smell of melting Plasticene that had brought Miss Neale running.

He moved to another window and found himself looking down the length of a long narrow cloakroom. Below him the enamel sinks that would resound with metallic drips from morning assembly to the going home bell and into the night. The tap was dripping below him, the incessant rivulets etched brown in the ancient enamel. In the soap dish lay a fragment of hard dry soap. Pink. He turned as he heard the navvies walking behind him, crunching frost with their heavy work boots. He glanced again at the bearded one, but there was nothing there. No spark. No, his steel grey eyes would gaze into the eyes of a Snake Island hag. One, two, three. Uh, uh, uh. He watched them walk out of sight, low voices punctuated with hard laughter. They turned the corner at the end of the main building and were gone.

In coke dreams he had seen the pagoda. Pale green Chinoiserie, all wicker and filigree. It was there, the frosted rhododendron bushes still crowding around it. They had found him there, Fred and Lenny, had taken him from the fretwork shadows to the dark stealth of the shed. Few had fallen so fast.

His mind jarred at the sound of a bell. The same bell? No, but close. Then he heard the hateful sound of children. The self-centred whine. Going home time. He watched from behind the grey bars as kids and kids came oozing out of the new complex, their mums lined up against the bright brick walls. Then all sound fell away, all vision faded, leaving one brilliant circle of light. There she was. The pretty little girl. Trim gasped. So like Fred. The eyes, the mouth, the nose. Could she be so cruel? Now she runs, toward him, arms open wide, into the arms of the woman. Janet.

He stepped back, a reflex. He crushed the cigarette beneath the Gucci shoe and waited until Janet and Sarah found their bearings. Then he followed them with his slow, deliberate limp.

Alan Bellamy eased the Range Rover into the lay-by and turned off the motor. He stretched himself, and then wound the window down. The air smelled of snow. Becky shook herself from the exhaustion she always felt after a particularly difficult sell. She looked out across the valley. The valley was wreathed in a low mist that hovered above the light fall of snow that covered everything. The sky promised more, which would not make their job very easy in the weeks to come. The Rover was a four-wheel drive, helping to alleviate the problem somewhat. The day was almost dark and Alan and Becky could make out the lights of Gloucester through the cold air, but only just.

“That was a very nice little property. I think you handled the buyer well.”

“Well, thank you. I thought it was a bit of an uphill climb, if the truth were told.”

“I know, but he was obviously taken with your disarming sales technique.”

“Oh, you mean the way I tripped over the doorstep and nearly ended up in his arms.”

“You have to admit, it’s an unusual approach.”

He returned to the view. She laughed to herself.

“Becky.” he stared ahead, “the pubs are open. Do you fancy a quick one before we get back?”

Becky had to admire his persistence. Or was it simply common courtesy. She suddenly felt like one of the boys.

The Air Balloon had looked inviting when they had driven past it a few moments earlier. She too stared ahead. She couldn’t look at him. She could imagine. She could not have imagined how aroused he was. He would not admit to his desire. He shifted in his seat wishing vaguely that he smoked. It was too soon.

“Another time, maybe.”

“Yes, another time.”

Becky had hovered between yes and no, teetering on the rim. What was it she missed? She had no idea. She missed the weight of him, his great bulk above her, beside her. She missed his eyes, those deep black wells of cruelty. She missed the heat of him, the hot breath of him as he sweated at his labours. She missed all of those things, but whether with sadness or relief she could not yet decide. She shuddered at the memory as the Range Rover roared into life.

“Opa?”

“Who is there? Who is there?” Such a frail voice.

It’s me. Look. Look what I’ve brought you.”

“You must light the lamp for me. I cannot see. I cannot see.”

Trim looked around him at the tiny bedroom in the council flat. He put the brown paper carrier bag down on the floor beside the old man’s bed. Then he felt along the wall by the door for the light switch. The light threw a dull gleam across the room, sending the old man’s lined face in to haggard relief.

“I have not seen you in so long. What do you want of me?”

“I have come to bring you some of the things you like. See. Thick cut marmalade. Jaffa cakes. Matzos. And look.”

The younger man held a brick shaped package in front of the old man. He peered unseeing at the printed label.

“It’s real coffee. From Dicker and Thijssen. From Amsterdam.”

“Coffee? Real coffee? Let me see.”

The younger man handed the old man the package. The old man sniffed at the vacuum pack.

“I can smell nothing. I am getting old.”

“Wait, I will make you some. How would you like that?”

“No, we must save it. Keep it for later. For Giselle.”

“We have plenty for Giselle. Let me make you some. It will warm you.”

He prised the package from between the arthritic fingers. He walked into the kitchen. The kitchen smelled of boiled cabbage. His mother had been there. The kitchen was as cold as the bedroom. Dampness pervaded the flat. Trim had not yet removed his camel coat.

“Do you have any milk and sugar?”

How would he know? He could hardly hear him. Trim located a tin of powdered milk and some rock hard sugar. He scraped three spoonfuls into the old man’s mug, then looked around for matches. The box he found was cold and clammy - too damp for fire. He searched his outer pockets for one of the lighters. He found a ribbed and platinum gas lighter and fired the ring under the kettle. There were scissors. He snipped off a corner of the vacuum pack, releasing a rich aroma of roasted coffee into the small flat.

“Boy, come here.”

He returned to the old man’s bedside.

“Can you smell it now? Isn’t it wonderful?”

Trim held the opened packet of coffee under the old man’s nose. The lines of the face smoothed out slightly as he smiled. A distant, private smile. That smell. Punctuating each day of his life with pangs of want. Fresh roasted coffee, from far-flung places. He could picture the harsh sunlight beating down upon the dirt road of the coffee plantations, could hear the rustling of coffee plants in the windless day, could see the gables of the white walled villas that hid behind the acreages. There they would sit, those ancient men, looking out across their riches; safe, comfortable, their futures secure and pleasant. They had fragmented like shrapnel from the core of the Reich, carrying their disease abroad to so many eager arms.

“I don’t want your coffee!”

The cry against injustice crackled from his dry lips with an ineffectual rasp.

“What? You must have some. It is very good. From Amsterdam.”

“NO. NO! I will not drink your damned coffee!”

The old man raised a feeble hand and caught the packet, sending the fine grounds across the linoleum floor in a cloud of dust. The younger man said nothing. He brushed at his coat before the coffee had time to stain the fabric, already damp in the cold air.

“Why did you come here? I have nothing more for you.”

“I told you. I came to bring you things. Surprises. From Amsterdam. I went to the house.”

“NO! You had no right to go there!”  he shouted feebly.

“There has been much new building, but the house is as you described it. Just the same.”

“You had no right.”

“The old woman is dead. Twelve years ago.”

“Why did you go there? It has no place in your life.”

The old man leaned back against his pillow, his eyes closed, his face contorted in the pain of bittersweet memory.

“Oh, mijn hemel! Giselle.”

“Aunty Jan?”

“What is it, pet?”

“What’s it like when you die?”

“Pick up your spoon, pet, you haven’t finished yet.”

“But what’s it like? Is it like going to sleep?”

“Yes, I think it is.”

“Do you still dream when you’re dead, then?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Miss Sharman says that heaven is like dreaming.”

“Yes.”

“I dream of Daddy sometimes and I think that then I go to heaven and play with Daddy.”

“Love, I don’t know.”

“It’s like I’m really there and Daddy comes and all. He comes from a big door that slides open, sort of glass, and there are lots of people and sort of music playing and funny voices and then we’re in the car and Uncle Glyn is driving and I sort of cuddle in with Daddy and he tickles me and I laugh and then I tickle him and he blows my tummy and we’re just in the car and then I wake up when the door bangs.”

Janet turned away from the child and wiped the tears from her eyes with the corner of her cardigan. Sarah finished the last spoonfuls of her custard. Janet cleared the dish away.

“Can I watch some telly?”

“What did Mummy say?”

“Mummy said that if I ate all my tea AND my custard, that I can watch Blue Peter.”

“Go on, then, but it’s straight to bed when it’s finished, all right?”

Janet wished that Becky would return from work. There was a lot to tell her. Janet drew the curtains across, noticing the heavy fall of snow, the light flakes beating with dull patters against the windowpanes. She heard the key turn with a sigh of relief. Janet met Becky in the small hall as she removed her boots.

“Hello love.”

“Becky.”

Becky read the look on Janet’s face wrongly.

“Oh no! He phoned again.”

“No, nothing like that. I just wanted to tell you. There was something Sarah said. About Fred.”

Becky looked relieved.

“What did she say? About him coming home?”

“No, love, she knows he’s dead.”

“I suppose she always did.”

“I think they did something at school about people dying, you know, like they do. Poor little bairn, she told me she’d been dreaming about Fred. I almost broke my heart, but don’t you see? She’s been able to accept it.”

“Was she upset?”

“Well, no. She just told me about her dream.”

“Oh, god! Poor little mite. Is she in bed?”

“No. She said you said she could watch some telly.”

“The little madam, I said not tonight.”

“Just leave her, don’t go on to her.”

“Don’t worry, Jan, I won’t.”

“How about a drink?”

So easy to say yes.

“I would love one. It’s been quite a day. I had one of THOSE clients. You know - all hands. Alan only saw the tail end of it. I told him I tripped. I just hope the so-and-so buys the place. At least it will be worthwhile.”

Sarah was engrossed in the programme as Janet and Becky came into the lounge. Becky kissed her on the top of her head and sank into Fred’s armchair.

“She’ll be all right.” said Janet as she poured them both a Cream Sherry.

“I know she will.”

“What about you, though? How are you doing?”

“Actually, I’m doing okay considering. I don’t know if what happened will ever really sink in. Somehow I seem to be able to blot it out of my mind, not so much the fact that he’s dead, I can accept that - but it’s the way he died.”

She shuddered. Took another sip and leaned back in the armchair. Fred was there.

“If it wasn’t for that crank phoning me up, I think I could put the whole thing out of my mind.”

“It hasn’t been easy for you, has it? I couldn’t cope like you have.”

“I couldn’t have coped without you and Glyn. And with my work, and Alan.”

“Alan?”

“Oh, he’s been just wonderful. I don’t know what I would have done without him either.”

“But he’s just your employer.”

“Oh, come on, Jan, you know he’s more than that! He really helped me to pull through some of the tough times. I don’t just sit in silence when we drive up to the sites. You know how it can hit you. He’s pulled me through many a sobbing session.”

Becky suddenly realised that she had said too much. Janet looked shocked.

“Oh god, Jan,” she laughed, “there’s nothing else going on! You don’t have to worry about my virtue.”

“I know, I know.”

Becky saw before her a narrow pathway paved with eggshells.

“Mummy!”

And Sarah came rushing into Becky’s arms as though she had just come home.

Trim took the Mercedes up around the Slad bends toward Cheltenham. The surface was quite unsuitable for driving, the fluffy layer of new fallen snow hiding an inch of black ice. But the danger of the narrow curves suited his elevated spirit. The Mercedes barely missed some damage on some of the corners, but Trim was fairly confident that no one else would be venturing along these roads at this hour. He simply knew that he could not face a night in the council flat. He desperately needed the hedonistic comforts of the Mews cottage. He had left the old man breathing asthmatically in the cold bedroom. In the pocket of the camel coat was a list of things he would buy; a Calor heater, a space blanket, simple provisions, the attributes of survival.

The Mercedes’ speakers poured forth the chilling tones and manic dischords of Schoenberg; Pierrot Lunaire – crazed globes of full moons blazing wild eyed over the snow ridged stone walls and avenues of low hanging branches. There were others, but they ploughed before him, snail-snow, stopping to allow the powerful car past and on and up. He would rather die in the drifts than spend this night in the council flat. That would be a torture of sorts, serving only to defeat the very object of the mission.

Suddenly, opposite the gates of Prinknash Abbey, he hated the Schoenberg. He slammed at the CD player with his fist, causing the disc to eject with annoying sloth. The Mercedes skidded to a halt as he searched for the right accompaniment for the remaining miles. He ran his finger along the plastic CD cases, searching out the perfect music. Ah! Glass; Songs From Liquid Days. Tape loop arpeggios rolling with the repetitiveness of a Bristol bound train. The journey would not stretch to the end of the disc.

As he parked the Mercedes in the Mews garage, the last part of the song cycle had begun. He sat in the dark of the garage with no light other than the level lights and the glowing tip of his cigarette. He woke with a start in silence. The cigarette hung with a fragile inch of ash. The ash was cold. The digital clock read 03:00. He had dozed for almost forty minutes.

Trim wrapped the camel coat around him as he slipped out of the car. The wind blew cruelly along the Mews, cajoling the powdery snow into picturesque drifts against the doorsteps and window frames of the cottages. Inside his cottage there was no hint of the frozen world beyond. The scent of bananas had been replaced by a dark chocolate smell of cigar, underscored with cloves. At his touch the concealed lighting lifted the monotone of the room into its soft grey-blues and dusty rose. The spelter lamp drew him. He discarded the camel coat, allowing it to fall to the carpeted floor. The ritual began again.

Four white lines, the claw marks of a snow leopard. Sheet ice severed his senses and lay lodged between the frontal lobe and the retina. Diamond hard angles and silica layers, facets and spectra flew like cold sparks from the shining guillotine blade that bore down unhindered toward the white throat of the cygnet, hard flurries of down whirling into the bright blue sky, the blue sky, the wide cloudless bright sun sky hammering at the hot stone pavement, crying from lack of dust, holding breath to breaking point - the sudden crack of summer thunder, the whiplash resounding, the bleeding vaporous wound, the express train roar of the spelter Norton. The phone. The phone.

He sat up, jarring his neck, numbing his hairline. No one knew the number. Dark. Still dark. The phone. But no one knew. The phone. Then nothing. Listen. Nothing. But the mood had been stolen, shattered into a billion tiny splinters. How he despised other people, the intruders into his private universe. He reached for the diary. He needed the compulsive excursion into the old man’s mind.

There is no god. I saw you again. You did not know. I saw you as you took that last look at the sunshine as you turned the corner. I could not look up to the sky as your soul rose to stain the cloud. I will never raise my head again.

Trim looked over the scribbled words again. ‘...There is no god.’ How could there be. Only a demon could have created such angels. He man slipped toward sleep as dawn rose over the far rim of Cleeve Hill, filling the frost hollow with strawberry ice cream.