Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller (17 page)

I finished the path for him and was stowing the shovels away when I heard the sound of someone’s boots causing the snow to squeak as they trudged through the deep drifts. I turned and saw Bernard wrapped in a great black overcoat, his hands hidden in pockets, the collar turned up to protect his neck. His lips flashed a smile, but it was over as soon as it had begun. His eyes looked desperate. He then brushed his hand through the greying hair over his ear, as if embarrassed, on the verge, I thought, of walking away from me.

“Morning, Bernard,” I said, which fixed him to the spot. “I thought you’d be long gone for work by now.” I closed the shed door, the thud dislodging snow from the roof, which fell back onto the recently cleared path. I cursed and kicked it away. “You want to see Mr Radunski?”

He shook his head quickly. “I came to see you, actually.”

“Oh?” We stood there, facing each other, and he did more hair stroking. “What about?” I said eventually.

“The fact is,” he began, then cleared an already clear throat. “The fact is I haven’t got a job anymore. They finished me just before Christmas.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Bernard,” I said, meaning every word.

“Restructuring, they called it. Short of cash is what we said it was. They finished a whole lot of us just like that. Anyhow, I ain’t there anymore and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m looking, don’t get me wrong,” he said, as if I was about to accuse him of something, “but you know how it is.”

I did. “Is there anything I can do?” I said.

“Well, that’s what I was coming to ask.” He bent his head and strangely his eyes seemed to find the exact spot where Mr Radunski had searched out his broken lock minutes earlier. “I was wondering whether you might ask at that place of yours if there was anything going.” It was hard for him. He was old enough to be my father. “Anything will do.”

“I’ll ask for you, Bernard,” I replied sincerely. “I don’t think there are any vacancies at the moment, but I’ll put in a damn good word for you all the same.”

He grinned, but it was a shadow of its former self. “You’re a good ‘un, Collie, that you are.” And he turned and made his way out of the yard and into the muffled white world beyond.

On Bernard’s behalf I asked about vacancies, but Mr Boulton the manager met my enquiry with a smug snort, informing me that there were hundreds who were ready to pounce on any job he might have. I could tell it made him feel important, as if his grotty little DIY store had overnight become the centre of the known economic universe, a tide of desperate people swilling around him, begging, pleading, and he like some kind of self-important, entrepreneurial Moses holding back the water. He liked the fact that young Patricia, who sat behind the till, had A-Levels, and I even heard him bragging about it to a sales rep who’d called to sell him paint; almost in the same breath that he boasted about his new Ford Escort.

Bernard received the news with a resigned shrug. Connie’s house was unusually quiet. Max was away, Connie was back at work, and Bernard was alone with the horse racing on TV, betting imaginary pound notes, telling me of the money he could have won, and excusing the lack of bets by putting it down to prudence on his part. “Waste of money,” he told me. “Putting a fiver on the back of a nag is like chucking it down the toilet.” And yet he cried aloud when a grey horse flashed by the finishing line, exclaiming, “I knew she’d do it! I could have had twenty quid off that one!”

I sat beside him. Eventually I confided in him that it was eating away at me, Ruby earning more than me and already being considered for promotion and even higher wages.

“Life’s a sick bastard,” he said. “I can’t get sod all and Connie marches into work within the blink of an eyelid. What does that say, huh? A man feels so damn useless.”

I didn’t know the answer. I could see he envied me the job I abhorred. Conflicting emotions crashed against each other in my skull. I should consider myself lucky, I thought, but didn’t want to, for I wanted to bask a little in self-pity. We sat there like two redundant book ends on either end of the sofa, waiting for something to support, waiting for a purpose. “It’s a bloody horrible job I’ve got,” I said at length, sensing his thoughts.

“It’s a job,” he replied tersely, almost as if I’d been scraping away leftovers from a plate into a bin before a starving Ethiopian. “If you don’t want it, I’ll have it.”

I shrugged off the suggestion with a little laugh, but felt the atmosphere was getting an edge to it, the fact that I had a job dividing us as solidly as if it was a towering brick wall.

“Even Max earns more than me,” Bernard added. “Can you believe that? Max? That lazy bastard…”

He left the room, brought back a few cans of cheap lager. I refused at first when he tossed me one, but he insisted, and we sat in front of the TV and watched the horses thundering around the course at Lincoln. He downed his fast and pulled the tab on a second before I’d even half finished mine. The oppressive silence punctured only by the shrill commentary on TV eventually got to me, and I made my goodbyes, glad to be free of the house, free of Bernard’s increasing morbidity.

Where was the magic that I’d known as a child? It had seemed then to infuse the very wallpaper, and rose from the corners of each room like a warm, scented steam. It had been a place of wonder, to escape into, like Alice going through her looking glass. But where was it now? Where was the enchantment? I felt a great heaviness crush me as I wandered down the familiar street. Connie’s house was now like any other terraced house here. It was as if the others that held it on all sides had conspired to siphon out its gay difference and eventually absorb it back into its dull, pollution-blackened fold.

*  *  *  *

We were jolted awake by a loud crashing.

Ruby sat upright in bed. “What’s that?” she said, her voice hushed in alarm.

There were thumps and bangs and a voice was raised in anger. It came from downstairs, out back in Mr Radunski’s yard. “It’s one o’clock in the morning!” I said disbelievingly, slipping my arms into a dressing gown and rushing to the bedroom door. Ruby followed. We tottered down the stairs, sleep lingering to make our footing unsure and our minds lethargic. I collided with Mr Radunski at the foot of the stairs. He had a long raincoat over his pyjamas. His face was pale, even in the poor light.

“What dat?” he said, his voice so panicked I thought it might crack, his eyes bulging so that the whites glared fiercely behind his blue irises.

     There was a strident crash against the back door, followed by a steady thumping, the beating of a weighty fist.
“Wherisitwherisitwhereisit!”
a voice bellowed. Mr Radunski turned on his heels and rushed into the shop, almost toppling his wife who’d joined us. We stared incredulously at the bulging wooden door.

“Who is it?” Mrs Radunski shouted above the clattering din, but the answer was a heightening of the blows. Next there seemed to be a foot striking the door, and the entire thing juddered, looking like it was about to cave in. It held. Mr Radunski pushed his way past us; in his hand was a meat cleaver, held up to his ashen face.

There was no doubt in his mind that the Russians had finally come.

“Wait a minute, Mr Radunski!” I said, holding onto the sleeve of his raincoat. Mrs Radunski flicked on a light switch and the glare brought the butcher to his senses somewhat. The cleaver dropped slightly.

“Who is dat?” he asked me, his lips trembling. “Who buddy break door like dat? At dis time of night!”

We all ducked at the sound of breaking glass. A large chunk of coal landed on the Victorian tiles at our feet. Mouths open, we gazed at the small window by the door, glass shards sticking from the frame like uneven teeth. The pounding on the door recommenced.
“My window!”
Mrs Radunski howled.

“Right, dat’s it! Dat enough. We see who want to play silly bugger!” Mr Radunski unlocked the door and snapped back the bolt. He flung open the door, the cleaver held protectively above his head. “You bugger! I use dis!” he warned, squinting into the dark yard beyond the reach of the light from the open door.

We edged to the doorway and strained to see beyond Mr Radunski’s shivering frame. I caught sight of a dark figure of a man separating itself from the black maw of the coal shed, another piece of coal held in his hand. He stepped into the light, sluggishly blinking away the brightness, the coal raised and about to be thrown.

“Bernard!” I said.

“Wherisit?”
Bernard cried.
“Whereisityoubastard?”

“You’re drunk,” I called.

Bernard let loose the black missile, and it thudded against the wall by the door. Mr Radunski ducked instinctively. “You buddy stoopid bugger!” he screeched. “I get de police!” and he darted by me.

Bernard headed back to the coal shed, tottering as he did so, reached in and produced another weighty lump of coal. “Put that down, Bernard!” I yelled. Then called to Mr Radunski as he lifted the telephone, “Put that down, Mr Radunski!” Both men hesitated.

“He’s a madman!” Mr Radunski said. “What he do, bangin’ on my door like dat, breakin’ my wife’s window, eh?”

“Hold on a minute, please,” I begged, and sighed when Mr Radunski put the receiver back onto its cradle.

I stepped out into the yard. “What are you doing, Bernard?” I asked, shaking my head. “This isn’t like you.”

Bernard looked stupidly at the coal; let it drop to the floor with a soft clunk. It disintegrated into a pile of black chippings. He followed it, sitting down on the concrete in the puddle of yellow light from the doorway. He rocked slightly, sniffing. “Whereisit?” he said quietly. “You promised me. You did.”

I went and stood in front of him. “Where’s what, Bernard? I haven’t got anything of yours.”

“You shed you’d ashk…for me. You shed you’d get me…a job.
Whereisityoubastard
?”

I looked back at Ruby and shrugged. “I didn’t promise you anything, Bernard. I said I’d try, that’s all. That was months ago. I told you what…”

“Whereisit!”
he shouted at me, his eyes squinted, some wicked light burning in them.

“You’re drunk, Bernard,” was all I could say in reply. “You need to get home.”

He broke down and began to weep. I stared at him, horrified. My instinct was to reach out and touch him, comfort him, but I had the overpowering feeling that he was somehow unclean, tainted by despair. Dangerous. Once again I looked at Ruby. She came across the yard and put a hand on Bernard’s shoulder while I released a helpless breath.

“I get police!” Mr Radunski called from the doorway.

“No, please, Mr Radunski.” I held out my hands appealingly to him. “He’s drunk. He doesn’t mean it.”

“My window!” he said, pointing to the glass at his feet. “He buddy good shot to say he not mean it!”

“I’ll pay for it,” I assured, and he mulled the thought over, appeared to calm down. “I think we should make him some coffee, or something,” I said.

He threw his hands up in the air. “He break my buddy door, my buddy widow, an’ I make him a buddy coffee?” He grunted and disappeared into the house, head shaking in disbelief. “Foreigners!” I heard him utter.

“It’ll take more than coffee,” Ruby confided as she leant close to my ear. I didn’t quite know what she meant.

*  *  *  *

Two days later Bernard walked uncertainly into the butcher’s shop. I was talking to Mr Radunski, buying a few lamb chops. Bernard looked embarrassed to see me there. He nodded at Mr Radunski from under dark brows and then acknowledged me in the same manner. There was a haunted look to his tired eyes. Mr Radunski nodded back, but eyed him warily. Not a word was spoken as Bernard thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a small wad of screwed up pound notes and loose change. He placed it on the counter top, separating the notes from the silver and copper, carefully unfolding the paper like he was performing a ritual. Dissatisfied, he put his hand back into his pocket and searched around, at last taking out another pound note, adding this to the small pile. Finally he pushed the lot across the marble towards Mr Radunski, glancing briefly but sheepishly at the butcher.

Mr Radunski shook his head and shoved the money back. “It OK – Philip already pay.”

Bernard glanced in my direction and then shoved the money over to me. “No, that’s fine, Bernard,” I said, “I don’t want your money. You keep it. You haven’t got a lot…”

It was the worst thing I could have said. Bernard angrily flicked the pile with the back of his hand so that some of the change clattered to the floor. He looked at me as if I’d betrayed him and turned and left the shop in a flurry of black. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.

*  *  *  *

Horrible, horrible things!

It faintly annoyed him, and, if he had to be really honest, it repulsed him to see the larger starlings, plumage blinking metallic blue in the sunlight, beating off the blue tits to secure sole ownership of the nuts and bread he’d put out on the bird table only minutes before. No sooner had the jolly, blue-winged, yellow-breasted, stumpy little fellows skittishly investigated the offerings and settled to snatch a few pecks at the basket of nuts than down they came, like dark marauding invaders parachuting from the sky, their aggression soon seeing off any competition. He watched with disapproval as the starlings scattered breadcrumbs snow-like from the table, arguing between themselves with many a frenzied flapping, screeching and hollering while the blue tits watched from a safe distance, balanced like tightrope walkers on the flimsy wire-like branches of a silver birch. He was tempted to go out and shoo the starlings away, give the other poor blighters a chance, but that would be interfering with the natural order of things, upset the balance of nature, and so he refrained and merely offered the proceedings a rueful stare.

In the end he picked up half a coconut through which he’d drilled holes and threaded string, and lumbered out of the kitchen and into the garden towards the bird table, the starlings whirring away in black flashes, like shadowy leaves picked up and tossed about by a fierce wind. He hung the coconut by its string from a nail on the table, steadied its pendulum swing so that it twirled ever so slightly when he took his fingers away. Turning, he clapped his hands loudly and the starlings that had been skulking within the hedge and along the wall took to the air. He couldn’t help it; he preferred the brighter colours and gentleness of the blue tits.    

The starlings reminded him ever so much of the boys in his class. Yes, that’s right, the boys. They were starlings. Raucous, scruffy little things that seemed to live on instinct, beyond beauty, beyond help and redemption. Pit fodder. They’d all end up scrabbling amongst themselves for scraps their entire lives, he thought. Like their fathers, and their fathers before them. Of all the lessons he gave he particularly loved teaching English, but for all that he might have been teaching Swahili, the only language the boys were at all eager to learn and become increasingly fluent in was profanity, and so his efforts had been wasted, water down the drain of their empty ears. A sign of the times, he guessed. Here we were, approaching the end of the 1960s and what had we got, what had been achieved by fighting another war, by rebuilding up the country from a bombed out and shattered ruin? Anarchy, that’s what. Bloody students who’d been given opportunities he could only have dreamed of biting the hand that fed them. The world over, not just here. War and turmoil all over again. What was happening?

“Shoo!” he said loudly, flapping his hands around to scare away a tiny flock of returning speculative starlings. “Go away! Go away!”

He snatched a look at his pocket watch. She’d be here soon, he thought. I’ll just hang on a few more minutes before going into school. Plenty of time yet. Another glance at the watch before stowing it away in his waistcoat pocket.

Mr Walton often thought he’d give up the entire business of teaching if he could, but he was too long in the tooth for that now, too set in his ways, too old to consider change. And anyhow, he’d always wanted to be a teacher, and apart from his stint in the army where Rommel had almost succeeded in taking this young teacher’s leg off with a shell that burst and spattered shrapnel all over his unit and killed two others near him, that’s all he’d ever done. He’d wanted to be there on hand to bring up the next generation of people that wouldn’t let that kind of thing happen again, wouldn’t give in to those death wish urges that so tainted history and sparked off two world wars that, in their turn, killed his young father at Ypres and his brother somewhere near – though they were never certain where exactly, because they couldn’t locate the precise whereabouts of his body – Monte Casino.  And what had he and the world ended up with?

Starlings.

“Go on, away! Away with you!”

Just then he heard the gate open and his heart crashed against his ribs.

“Morning, Mr Walton!” she said.

He nodded quickly, a greeting from the lips not possible as yet, for somehow the words had remained lodged in his thick throat.

“You feed them too much,” she said. “One day they’ll land on your path and be so heavy they’ll crack it. Or they’ll never be able to take off again, that’s what’ll happen, Mr Walton.”

He wiped away the absurd thought with a swipe of his meaty hand and a smile. He turned away from her, not because he didn’t want to see her, but precisely because he did. She awakened fires within him he’d thought long extinguished, and their heat was unsettling, threatened to consume him with emotions that caused him to feel more than a little concern for his normally clinically ordered state of mind. So he made the pretence of stopping the half coconut from swinging, even though it only twirled slightly, and paused to admire his handiwork even though there was nothing to admire, because he thought that she might see in his eyes that she affected him in ways it wasn’t quite right to be affected. He was old enough to be her father. And yet he felt, when she was near him, young enough to be…

“I’ll start upstairs today, Mr Walton.”

He smiled and agreed with another nod. Then he found his voice. “Yes, that’s fine, Connie. Upstairs. That’s fine. Go ahead,” his hands shooing her away as if she too were but a tiny bird. A blue tit.

That waist, those legs, the short skirt. He had to turn away again and exhaled a not too steady, prolonged breath that rattled in his throat. But Connie Stone might just as well have had him on a leash, for as soon as she stepped into the house his fat little legs were carrying him up the path after her. He arrived at the kitchen door, put his head around the door frame in time to see her on her haunches, humming some sort of tune (The Beatles? Rolling Stones? They all sounded the damn same these days), rummaging around in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, a plastic bucket by her side, a cloth draped over the handle. She pulled out a duster, a can of spray polish, then a can of Vim. He panted, in part due to the exertion that was a foreigner to his body, but, and here he tried not to admit it – yes he did, honestly, he tried so hard – partly due to her. To Connie Stone. To the woman whose backside was wriggling enticingly in front of him. She emerged from the cupboard like a beautiful butterfly, placing a delicate hand with brightly-painted nails on the cupboard to heave her body to an upright position. He felt he’d been caught unawares, and coughed to clear his throat, blinking behind his spectacles, averting his gaze as she turned her head to face him.

He said, “I was going to make a cup of tea. Before…” He walked into the kitchen, rubbing his hands together, readjusting his spectacles. “Before I went to work. Did you fancy a cup?”

She smiled sweetly. “No thank you, Mr Walton. I haven’t got the time. And I don’t think that you’d got time to be messing about making pots of tea.” She exaggerated the glance at the wall clock that registered 8.35 a.m. “You’re going to make yourself late.”

Chiding him like a child. Just like his wife used to do with that high pitched ring to her voice, that beautiful smile on her lips that belied the fact that she was in charge, she captained the ship, and he was but a Jolly Jack Tar. Jolly. Yes, very jolly. A happy ship.

“Nonsense! The school’s only up the road,” he returned. “I can be there in five minutes.” He fidgeted uneasily as she gathered up her various bits and pieces and piled them into the bucket. Then he thought he’d better fill the kettle, because he’d said he was going to make a cup of tea and he’d better do what he’d said otherwise he’d make himself look silly, even though she was right and he might make himself late. And being late for work was something he’d rarely been. But all the same he took the kettle in his large hand and filled it from the tap as she brushed by him, her hip touching the side of his leg. He sighed, fingered the bridge of his spectacles, and inadvertently let the kettle overflow just as his thoughts were overflowing. He emptied the surplus water back down the sink, watching Connie out of the corner of his eye as he did so. She had opened a cupboard and was reaching up for a feather duster on a high shelf. The effect was to lengthen her slender legs, squeeze in her already narrow waist, and Mr Walton found he was captivated. To the point of emptying far too much water out of the kettle. He cursed silently and refilled it to the correct level, taking it swiftly to the gas stove. He floundered about, searching for the matches, his attention drawn to Connie.

“Are you sure?” he ventured softly. “It’ll only take a minute or so.” But he couldn’t find the matches, to his annoyance. He grunted his impatience.

“No thank you,” she said again. “I have another house to clean later this morning.”

With that she disappeared through the door that led to the stairs and he listened to her light footfalls on the treads, the familiar squeak of the loose boards on the landing. It was so good to have a woman in the house again, he thought. So, so good. They didn’t realise just how much he missed her. Missed his wife. Missed Jean. Missed the captain. Oh yes, they all thought he was the strong one, big as he’d always been, broad in the chest, thick-legged, arms like tree trunks they used to say. But she was the strong one. Inner strength, that’s what it was. She filled the house with her presence; she filled his life with it. Solid, dependable, all the things you’d expect him to be. But he couldn’t match Jean. No man could. At times he thought it wrong and cruel that she’d been born a woman in a man’s world; she could have been and done so much more than become a teacher’s wife. And he danced to her tunes, because he loved her and she oozed confidence, and he thought that by giving her the respect she deserved she might not become so depressed that she couldn’t escape being a woman constrained by the bars that men put up to women. And he missed her terribly with each day. The hurt hadn’t faded or gone away; it was like rheumatism of the brain, a dull ache every time he turned his mind to think of her, and think of her he did, with far too much regularity. Unhealthily, he’d been told. Let her go. Try to… What? Forget? Try to forget her? Never! She’d left behind a hole – no, a chasm. And what could possibly fill such a monumental rent in a person’s life, his very fabric? Now his ship sailed its dark sea without aim, without its captain, and he was no longer a Jolly Jack Tar. Which is why he couldn’t just uproot and leave this town, as he’d so wanted to leave, to become something else. Because he was scared. Scared to death of the vast, unknown and terrifying seas of uncertainty without his captain.

He heard Connie moving around above him and felt a warmth swell inside to hear the house making sounds that didn’t emanate from him alone. He abandoned the kettle, left cold and dripping on the cooker, and rushed to the bottom of the stairs. He could hear her in the bedroom. “Do you want the Hoover bringing up?” he called.

“That would be so lovely, darling,” she returned.

Darling! He shook his head and grinned. Nobody called him darling. The boys certainly didn’t. He felt – yes, he felt sort of young again when she talked to him like that. The sort of talk that had passed between his wife and him all those years ago when they mounted these same stairs on their wedding day. Young talk. Talk between two lovers. Between intimates. What shall we do today, darling? It looks like rain, darling. I love you, darling. You look tired, darling. Don’t worry, darling, the doctors say the chances of beating the disease are very, very good these days.

He opened the cupboard at the foot of the stairs and dragged out the vacuum cleaner, and with an evident spring in his step he carried the cumbersome machine up the stairs and placed it in the bedroom where Connie was dusting the dressing table, much as he’d seen Jean do it so many times before, carefully moving aside the Art Deco glass dressing table set, spraying polish and whipping the duster around. The odour of polish, of creamy beeswax! The memories came shooting back.

“There, all yours,” he said, and held out both hands as if presenting her with a trophy.

“Lovely,” she returned, intent on her work.

He lingered in the doorway, the doorway to the room Jean and he had shared all their married life. Their wedding photograph still occupied the same spot it had when they first hung it on the wall, when the people who hung it looked like the people in it, before they became old and altered – here was a man with hair, a man with a waist, a man with hope for the future – so that it became difficult to see themselves as the happy couple who smiled joyously for the photographer from Barnsley who did it cheaply and as a hobby, but who did a professional job nonetheless, even tinting their cheeks with a pink, summery glow that made them look a little like rustics in a Victorian rural painting.

“Your boy seems nice enough,” he ventured.

“Max can be a bit of a bleeder, as I’ve said so many times.”

He winced. So unlike Jean. Never one to swear, not even a ‘damn’, not even when –

“His written work is good. He writes some very interesting stories, especially for one so young. Perceptive.”

“Perceptive?” her eyes were bright, aflame because he’d praised her son. “That’s nice,” she said.

He fluffed out, pleased he’d touched her so. “We can develop that little talent,” he continued, even though the child irked him, annoyed him with his sullen and unreceptive attitude. Connie smiled the smile of self-satisfaction, and set about her work again. He was glad he’d suggested she clean for him, when he found out that she did similar work for others around the town, overcoming the shock of her initial appearance, their first meeting when he thought her uncouth, flaunting her sexuality like she seemed to do. But then he thought of Jean, and if she’d been young like Connie, only living now and not when she did, she too would have been something similar, would have been eager to flag her personality more openly, in a way women of Jean’s generation were prevented from doing. Yes, Connie and Jean were the same really, when you weighed it all up. Astonishingly they even had a look of each other. And as the months passed he felt somehow that Connie had become another part-time Jean, settling into his house nicely, like suddenly finding that missing jigsaw piece, and now the picture was whole again.