England's Lane (13 page)

Stan Miller was carefully placing each of his feet quite flatly on the treads of the stepladder, having just fetched down from the topmost shelf the large glass jar of chocolate raisin fudge. Only last spring, it was—or was it the spring before? Do you know, time … it passes that quick, I can't even be sure in my own mind. But it was a bit before Easter time, that I do know, because I'd just been having the devil of a job storing all the eggs that my wholesaler had just dropped off on me. Yes—and he'd given me no sort of a warning, you know. Just turned up in his van without so much as a by your leave with all these hundreds of Easter eggs, and me with a stockroom packed to the rafters as it was: mainly down to the crates of Tizer returnables—they just take forever, these people, to come and pick them up. So what's all this, I says to him, my wholesaler: it's not Easter, is it? Not for weeks. Yeh, he says, but that's the way it is, see? People are wanting them earlier and earlier, don't ask me to explain it. Creme Eggs—them little Cadbury's numbers? Can't get out enough of them, I can promise you that: they're clamoring. That's what he said.

Anyway, I'd had a bit of a flap on that day, as I recall, what with all the eggs coming in on top of everything else. Some days, the
shop, it's like that: busy from the off. Other mornings, I'm checking the door to see if I remembered to unlock it. How it is, in retail. My line it is, anyway. Sometimes the whole world and his brother is wanting his fags and his sweets for the kids—lollies, ices, fizzy drinks, gobstoppers, what have you—and the very next day no one so much as walks through the door for the better part of an afternoon. It's a mystery, really. So as I say, I was up the ladder later in the day, just like I am now, and ooh—I come a terrible cropper. I'm on my way back down, and the step, that last step on the ladder, it just wasn't there—can't understand it. Anyway—went flying. The fruit bonbon jar, that broke. Sticky sweets all over the place: everywhere, they went—so that was good money right down the drain. Christ Alive. And my ankle wasn't right, not right for weeks. Black and blue my leg was—all down the one side. So now I play it very safe. Come down nice and slowly, arm around the jar—and they're heavy when they're full, you know. You don't realize. They can be quite a weight, those big glass jars: people don't think of it. And that top shelf … covered in dust. I've really got to give the whole of the shop a real proper going over. Been putting it off for ages. There just doesn't seem to be the hours in the day, that's the trouble. I'm always saying I'll do it of an evening time, after I've listened to the wireless. But once I've seen to Anthony—got him his tea, sorted out his medicines, massaged his little legs for him and all the rest of the palaver … and then there's the wife, of course. Changing her sheets. That's become a daily occurrence, I won't go into it. Don't like to take them in to be done any more, not any more, so I have to see that Anthony's all nicely settled in with his homework and a Kit-Kat, and I nip round the corner to the Laundrette. Then I'm taking away all the plates of food she hasn't eaten … her favorite biscuits, the sausage rolls she always said she was so partial to. Cups of tea she's barely touched. Clearing it out,
washing it up. Yes—and once I've done all of that, I'm fair fit for nothing, I'll be frank with you. Just watch the news and have a smoke of my pipe. While trying not to dread tomorrow. And that never works, of course. Never works at all. Clouds my evening, the thought of tomorrow.

Anyway, I've given the lady her quarter of chocolate raisin fudge—isn't a great seller, the chocolate raisin fudge, not these days it's not: a jar, it'll last me a good six months—whereas your sherbet lemons and your aniseed balls and your liquorice comfits, those I'm replenishing most every week or so. Yes, so done that, got her her change, and now it's Mr. Barton who's rapping the edge of a florin on the counter. He's like that, Mr. Barton—ever so mannerly, always a smile on him, I'm not saying that—but he's not the most patient of people. Always very eager to conduct his business and be off. Well—businessman, you can hardly blame him. I'm very accommodating, of course, very eager to please, because there's no one in the Lane who's such a good customer for my more higher-class lines. No one comes close. Like today—his usual eight ounces of violet creams for his wife (“violent,” he calls them—it's his little joke, says it every time). Fiona, I think she's called, the wife. And twenty Sobranie Black Russian, which he'll buy from time to time. Not on a regular basis. I only get them in for him. And often of a weekend he'll take a box of Terry's 1711, the two-pound box with the bow. I only get those in for him, and all. Never sell one of them round here, not unless it's Christmas time, maybe. There aren't that many who are willing to spend a guinea and more on a box of chocolates. But there—I daresay there's money in meat.

“Keeping well are we, Mr. Barton? Everything shipshape, is it?”

Jonathan glanced at him sharply, as if he had been stung.

“Shipshape …? In what way are you meaning shipshape …?”

Stan was widening his eyes—rather taken aback by the challenge in the man's voice, and eager to dissociate himself from any intent whatever.

“Er … well truth to tell, Mr. Barton, I wasn't meaning anything. Just came out. I say these things, and I'm hardly aware.”

Jonathan held his gaze before relaxing his face into an easy smile.

“Of course. Yes yes—I maybe even am guilty of doing so myself. With the customers, you know. Becomes something of an automatic routine, doesn't it really?”

Stan was nodding. “You're telling me. Yes indeedy.”

“Quite. And maybe some Black Magic, I'm thinking …”

“Certainly, Mr. Barton. Pound box all right, is it? Largest I have, I'm afraid. Just at the moment.”

“A pound should do me very well, thank you Stan. How much do I owe you? Rain's kept off, anyway. Thus far. Something, I suppose …”

“That'll be, let me see … with the cigarettes, the chocolates there, that'll be thirteen and eleven, thank you Mr. Barton. Quite a black time you'll be having, then …”

And he was immediately alarmed to see that the gleam of accusation was back in Mr. Barton's eye. He babbled his explanation.

“I was just meaning, you know … what with the Black Russian, the Black Magic … yes. I think they said it might come on later. That's what it said on the wireless. And seven-and-a-penny change. Thanks very much. The rain, I mean.”

And Stan was thinking two things: that he wasn't sure whether it was just remembering about that old ankle injury of his a while back that had made it maybe somehow lodge in his mind … but either way it was suddenly giving him gyp. Aching terrible. And why is it … here's my other thought: why is it that I call him Mr. Barton, and he calls me Stan? Seems to come quite naturally to the
both of us, though. I suppose it's just him being a gentleman, really, butcher or no.

“Well thank you so much, Stan. Until anon, I have no doubt. And now I must be gone.”

Indeed I must: so very much to see to. The, ah … incident, shall we call it? The incident, yes, with the unconscionable pig man, this has, you know, honed my mind into incisive concentration, as any impending peril will. The status quo is very evidently in the balance: the merest touch, even no more than the approaching warmth of a finger—an angel's breath, the kiss of a feather—will trigger the lurching of the scales, and then the clattered capsizing of all my equanimity, this followed closely by immediate, sprawling and unseemly collapse. There can no longer be any doubt upon the matter. And as a consequence, I have to take immediate and decisive steps in order to protect myself, in order to keep from harm those few who are dear to me, while flagrantly utilizing as part of the essential process all those who are not. All those who are thoroughly expendable—and it is extraordinary, I long ago realized, how very many are. People at large, they seem not to see this. They maybe wish, I don't know—to love and be loved by all? Can such moon-eyed gullibility truly be so apparently universal? Though of course certainly one may, tight up to the razor's edge of one's own advantage, appear to embrace so nonsensical an illusion, but only for as long as so distractingly colorful a facade continues to conceal the true intent, while covertly furthering all one's best interests. I, but of course, have my own best interests at heart—well naturally I do—and at the moment it is clear to me that no one must be alienated—not now, not yet. An even keel—this is what at all costs must surely be maintained. No just palpable flutter of panic, no easy gesture of impetuosity—all must be serene. The circumference of my charm, indeed, must even be further extended—for I need now
within my circle and close to my side a big and stupid man who will unquestioningly do my bidding. And this is why I made so singular an approach to the negro carpenter: Obi, his name is. Which, coincidentally, it glancingly occurs to me, sounds not unlike “obey.” Sort of name, I suppose, one of these would have.

I had been observing the two of them while they were side by side and working in my yard. Though considerably prior to that … the clearing up, the making good—the appalling task of clearing up, of making good, following the demise of the loathsome pig man, that inept and importunate blackmailer whose cupidity was his downfall … this I confess to having found taxing to the utmost. It is fortunate that in a butcher's yard, the embedded grime of hardened blood is hardly out of keeping—for despite my constant swabbing, the interstices between the cobbles, still they are thick with it. The pig I had dismembered in the customary manner—alas, no buckets of blood for the black pudding man upon this occasion, for it was awash, and seeping into my shoes—hurtling away into the gullies, there to coagulate. Church's, I had been wearing at the time—half brogues, in a very fetching chestnut shade. Thoroughly destroyed, of course, as was my suit, shirt, tie … and the number of times dear Milly has since, like a magnet, cleaved to the topic: “How on earth could you have forgotten to wear your apron? Hm? And oh—your suit, Jonathan! Your beautiful suit …!” Yes well, dear Milly, I had constantly to assure her, I do have other suits, yes? My wardrobe is reasonably extensive: it is hardly a calamity. And all this pursuant to that ludicrous outburst of petty-minded and so very bourgeois jealousy upon her part—for all the world as if, I don't know … as if she can somehow imagine that she has some sort of a claim upon me. As women, girlishly, so often seem to come to believe. And how very thoroughly stupid of her not to have perceived that I was lying. Could she not honestly have addressed
the question as to why else a person of my stature should care to spend so much as even a moment of my time with so vacuous a child as Doreen, if not in order to ravish her rigorously? She is, after all, so very young. Firm, yes … and not inflexible. She is also in awe of me, and in common with seemingly just everyone, may be bought in exchange for so very pitifully little. A pound of Black Magic in her particular case—as I later shall be demonstrating. And even in my hot and fevered bloodied state, following an unforeseen and wholly impromptu murder, whatever abject nonsense I had come out with, Milly had accepted without question: was gaspingly grateful to me for having expressed so evident an absurdity, along with my lavish contrition for all the distress that so silly a misunderstanding had quite evidently occasioned her. Women, you see. Oh dear. Oh dear dear me.

Well I burned them, all of my clothes. Burned them in a brazier in the yard, along with those of the pig man. Had to cut them off him, with my boning knife: his body had so very quickly become unyielding. It came to my ears that one or two neighbors and passers-by with nothing else whatever to occupy the chasm of their echoingly vacant minds were grumbling and wondering at the rising smoke, and so I quickly spatchcocked a couple of chickens, threw them on to a grille over the flame: gave away the pieces in the shop. The peasants were predictably delighted and silenced: what a very fine idea Mr. Barton, they chirruped and chorused—and how uncommonly generous of you, Mr. Barton: this to be a regular thing, is it …? Simple-minded to a fault. A scrap of griddled poultry … they seemed to value it above sovereigns.

I have hanging on the wall a series of tough jute sacks which I regularly fill with bone, gristle, skin and heads. In France, they would pay you for the heads, and handsomely, but in this benighted country we tend not to care for all that sort of thing. Each week,
someone from I know not where with a gammy leg and just the one tooth in his skull—a nicotine fang, in tune with the horn of his fingernails—calls to collect them, the sacks, in exchange for hardly more than pennies. They boil it all down, he was telling me. Yes, he said: we boil it all down. I did not inquire further. I simply added this to my fund of redundant information: that all across the nation there are sick-seeming, angular and maimed individuals, malodorous in greasy leather aprons, who heave up on to their slight and bony shoulders large, weighty and bulging sacks of nearly putrid animal detritus, and this, at a later date and for some unspecified purpose, is all boiled down. The pig man I have had to eke out. Mingled with cow bone, trotter and chicken carcass. Dribs and drabs, you know. Piecemeal, so to say. Unrecognizable parts, chopped up small. There remains, however, still a fair deal of him within the refrigerator. I daresay by Christmas I shall see off the very last portions. In reasonable time to take stock of the turkeys.

I had called in the negroes to build for me a sort of a shed affair out there. Not really a shed, I suppose—more what you might call a large stout cupboard, in which I intend to have installed a sizeable butler's sink—in order to make for more convenient sluicing—as well as a safe. My money, that which still I have, all that is left to me, it is strewn about the building in a manner which now, in the light of these recent and more than somewhat unsettling events, I regard to be wholly unsatisfactory. The money, it must be consolidated, easily accessible and neatly portable, should sudden and solitary flight one fearful moment become an awful necessity. And at first I had thought there was nothing to choose between them, the negro chappies—both rather tall, fit and able … well you see they really all do appear to me to look exactly the same, is the truth of the matter, and I hardly think I can be alone in that. Even the women, when occasionally you glimpse them—if you take away
those childish decorations in their unspeakable hair, ignore the gaudy garb, then they look not at all unlike the men … all of whom, of course, so very closely resemble one another. Must be so strange for them. Or maybe they don't quite see it like that. Who could know? And who, frankly, might even care? But then I observed that one of these black and glistening strapping young lads, while they both were toiling in the sunlight, was constantly smiling. Truly, all the time—great big beam, the size and whiteness of his teeth, the flash of gum and tongue, so very startling, in a lascivious if also faintly nauseating manner, within all the encompassing sweat-flecked black of him. Even was singing a bit, some or other rather irritating thing. The other, though—he moved with reluctance, like a sullen cat. His ugly hooded yellow eyes, hard and glowering at me with undiluted loathing. He was taut with bands of anger, his brow so rigid and heavy from resentment embedded darkly, and fathoms within him. Cheated by life, does he imagine himself to be? Dealt with harshly by God himself? A justifiable grievance, I should have said, though one clearly unshared by his lackadaisical, conceivably merely simple, companion. In my judgment though, here was a man both ready and waiting … though quite for what, I am sure he would be thoroughly at a loss to articulate. He is coiled, tightly coiled, quite prepared to pounce, seared by the age-old weals of barely deadened burning rage, soon to bubble back up into fury—and therefore most certainly of easy morals. In return for the proper remuneration, this man, I considered, would be most eminently biddable: there is nothing he would not be prepared to do for me. As so indeed it proved. For Obi—he now was my man.