Magnificent Joe (20 page)

Later that day, we finish our allotted jobs by about 4.15 p.m. It's getting dark, so it seems a little late to start a new task and we troop back to the other barn and settle down with a cup of tea. Jethro was around for a while in the morning, but buggered off muttering darkly about cowsheds, bio-security, and vet visits. We haven't seen him since. Lee sits there looking at our ‘list' like he wants to wipe his arse on
it.

‘Aye, there's no point starting on any of this. We'll barely get moving before we have to lock the tools up again.'

‘Suits me,' I say, and shift in my deckchair, which creaks alarmingly but doesn't collapse.

‘Pub, then?' asks Rupert.

‘Better give it another twenty minutes or so in case he turns up again,' says Lee. ‘Don't want to look like we're taking the piss.'

‘I don't think I can come, anyway,' I
say.

Lee and Rupert look at me in mock horror. ‘You don't want beer?' says
Lee.

‘Aye, but something's come up.' In truth, I'm worried about Joe. The state he's in at the moment, I feel like I should be at home so that if anything happens, I can intervene. Then again, his neighbours did say they'd keep an eye on him and he's going to the village hall tonight anyway. I'm not that keen on him being around those people in his current mood, but at least they know who he is and, like Mr Green said, I can't babysit
him.

‘I'm sorry, mate, but if you're going to keep working here, you need to have your initiation.'

‘Well, I'm driving anyway, so I can only have a couple.'

‘Doesn't matter – it's still compulsory.'

‘All right, all right, I'm persuaded.'

‘Cracking.'

—

About forty-five minutes later, we park our cars outside a village pub and it doesn't look promising. In fact, it looks closed. We get out and gather at the front door. I try the handle; it's locked.

‘Bollocks.'

‘Lights are on,' says
Lee.

We walk over to a window and peer in. There's a man behind the bar polishing glasses, with a stack of drip-trays in front of him. Lee raps on the glass. The man starts and looks round. Lee knocks again. The man sees us and frowns, then points at his watch and waves us away. Lee makes a beseeching gesture with the palms of his hands. The man shakes his head and goes back to polishing. Lee knocks again. The man gives us a long-suffering glare, then puts down the glass and cloth, and comes to the door. We walk round to meet him. The door opens a crack and his head pops
out.

‘Not open till seven,' he barks.

‘Aw, come on, it's been a hard day. We only want a couple each,' says Lee with his best smile
on.

‘I'm closed.'

‘We'll be good. You can't turn away custom, can
you?'

The man grunts and looks at our trousers. ‘You can't sit in the lounge like that.'

‘We'll stay in the
bar.'

‘Fine. But any monkey business and you're out on your
ear.'

I'm not sure what monkey business he thinks we might get up to, but watching Lee butter him up makes me feel quite happy. It's nice – for a change – to be around someone capable of genuine charm. We murmur our promises of good behaviour and the man lets us in. Lee buys three pints of bitter and we sit down round a table in the bar, next to the unlit
fire.

‘Rule one,' he says, ‘is always get on the right side of the local landlord.'

‘Good policy,' I
say.

Lee holds up his glass. ‘To
Mac.'

‘Aye. To Mac.' We lift our glasses and toast, and then I add, ‘And to a brighter future.'

Lee smiles at me across the table. ‘Oh, yeah?'

‘Yeah.'

Lee and Rupert look at each other.

‘What?' I
ask.

Lee laughs and tips his glass at me. ‘Nothing, mate. You're sound. You're
in.'

And despite all the other shit I've got to deal with, I'm grinning like an idiot.

—

I said more about things than I probably should have – enough to make their ears prick up – but at least I skirted round the part that concerns Laura. Now I'm driving home, having drunk more than I probably should have, and I'm wondering how she is. I haven't heard from her for a couple of days. Having a drink with Lee and Rupert made me feel part of something again, and despite everything, I seem to be in quite a good mood. Maybe I should go over there and see if I can cheer her up. Not that I can remember ever cheering up anybody in the past, but it's worth a
try.

I swing by the offie on the way home and buy a bottle of wine. I never drink wine by choice, so I just get one that costs £4.99; it seems like a reasonable price point. Then I go home to change out of my work clothes, where – to my relief – there is no sign of Joe. Clean and dressed once more, I walk over to Geoff's house.

She answers the door. ‘Hello.'

‘I thought you might like something to take your mind off things.' I hold up the
wine.

‘Is alcohol your answer to everything?'

‘Ummm…'

‘No, it's a nice idea. Come
in.'

I follow her in. ‘How've you been?'

‘I'm alright. Just getting on with things. I'm going back to work tomorrow. I mean, I have to. I can't just sit here going crackers.'

‘Aye, I'm back at work
too.'

‘I was going to say you seem in a better mood than last time I saw you. Let me have a look at your face.' We stand under the main light of the living room while she tuts over my bruises. ‘Well, at least you're healing.'

‘Course. It'd take more than that to sideline
me.'

‘You silly bastard. Sit down. I'll get some glasses.'

I do as I'm told. A couple of framed photographs of Geoff and Laura together stand on the mantelpiece. Ordinary objects, but to see them under these circumstances has a sharpness to it. I suppose they've always been there, but I don't remember noticing them the last time I was over here. I was probably too engrossed in other problems. I feel drawn to stand up and look at them more closely, but then Laura returns with two glasses.

She must have clocked the direction of my gaze because she stops next to one of the photos and says, ‘That was in the Lake District, last year.'

‘Oh, aye, I remember you going there. When he came back, he complained you made him walk up hills.'

‘Yeah. He wasn't convinced. It's a screw-cap, isn't
it?'

‘Yeah. Only the best.'

She sits next to me. We open and pour the wine and say our ‘cheers', and she sips hers with a wrinkled nose and says, ‘It's not bad.' I try mine; it just tastes like wine, so I agree with
her.

We chat for a while about this and that. She doesn't offer further information about Geoff – and I don't ask for any – so I assume she hasn't heard from him. I'm just happy to talk to someone about anything other than Geoff or Joe. She asks me about my new job and I tell her that I like it so far, and almost add, ‘It's better than working with Barry,' but think better of bringing up that subject. ‘It's varied,' I say. ‘We've got all kinds of jobs to do, and it's a nice spot.'

‘Sounds like you're happy with
it.'

‘I am, actually. Yeah. I
am.'

She drinks her wine quickly – faster than me – and pours herself a new glass, gives me a top-up. It starts to go to my head. I remember that I haven't eaten. ‘Careful, you'll get me plastered.'

‘That's funny, coming from
you.'

‘I'm not that
bad.'

‘You could have fooled
me.'

I look at my glass and tip it so the wine laps up the side, then slips back. Its surface glimmers in the light. Laura brings her face closer to mine and says, in mock-mothering tones, ‘Awww, I'm sorry. Did I hurt your feelings?'

I feel her breath on my ear. I pull away a little and open my mouth, but I don't have any words to say, so I face her for a dizzy moment, trapped between silence and speech. We are still, and then I don't know who moves first, but our lips are together. I put my hand on her face. Her tongue flickers against
mine.

‘Jesus!' I pull
away.

‘Wait.'

‘No. You're his
wife
. I've got to
go.'

Geoff reclines on a lounger and sips his third beer of the morning. He isn't used to the heat and humidity yet; the air coats him like baby oil. They told him this was the
cool
season in Thailand. On the other side of the pool, a woman takes off her bikini top and Geoff watches her through his sunglasses. He likes the look of her, but is suddenly aware of the size of his own belly. In England, he would never have thought of it, but out here it feels ridiculous. Four days in and he hasn't met anyone else who even approaches his
size.

Still, for four days he has barely moved. The heat slows him down, but the truth of it is that this place overwhelms him. During the taxi ride from the airport, the sheer weirdness of everything gave him a headache, while the traffic almost gave him a heart attack. Welcome to Paradise. It made him wish he'd gone for Spain after all, but Spain just didn't seem far enough away. He hasn't left the hotel compound since he arrived. It's comfortable
here.

The topless woman rubs on sunblock. Her hands circle her thighs until the streaks disappear and her skin glistens. Geoff watches as she works her way up her body, and when she seems to linger over her tits for slightly longer than necessary, Geoff isn't sure if he is imagining things. He gently squeezes his dick through the pocket of his Hawaiian-patterned beach shorts. This is no good, he thinks. What I need is a whore.

That's something Geoff has never done before, although he knows Barry has. He had suspected Jim too, because Jim definitely never gets laid any other way. Or at least that's what Geoff thought until he found out about…No. Geoff shakes the image out of his head. The point is that Geoff always thought it was too dirty – something he would never be desperate enough to do – but now that money is no object, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Besides, with what that bitch has put him through, he feels entitled to
it.

He motions for another beer and, while he waits, peels the label on the bottle already in his hand. He saw them on the street on the way over here. Just glimpsing them through the window of the taxi, he knew instantly what they were even though he has never used one or ever been to this country before. In fact, they were the most familiar thing he saw during the whole drive. Apart from the beggars. They seemed pretty familiar
too.

‘Sir, beer.'

The kid with the tray. Geoff feels sorry for him, working in this heat in a jacket and tie. ‘Thanks. If I'm Sir Beer, you must be Squire…' Geoff trails off as he realizes that he doesn't have a punch line and that the kid doesn't understand a word anyway. ‘Never mind.' The kid just stares at him blankly and holds out a chit to sign. Geoff waves it away. ‘Later. I'm not going anywhere, am
I?'

And he isn't going anywhere. He just isn't ready to go outside yet, not alone anyway. What he'll do is go and talk to the man at the desk, the one who smiled a lot and promised to make his stay pleasurable. He'll go and see the smarmy little fucker and he'll use his new magic words. ‘Be discreet.' That's what the accountants promised to be, and they bloody well were. Geoff winced at their fee, but they were worth it: they fixed everything. It turns out that ‘be discreet' is powerful voodoo once you've got the cash to back it
up.

On the other side of the pool, the topless woman has been joined by a topless friend. Now they're putting sunblock on each other. Geoff smiles, stretches, and settles back to enjoy the view. Tomorrow, someone is coming to talk to him about getting a place to
live.

For the next week, Joe spends almost every other night sleeping on my couch. He turns up in the evening – or just waits on my doorstep until I get back from work – bedraggled, hungry, unable to cope. I take him in, let him share whatever I'm eating, get down the spare blanket, and in the morning take him home. Then he's all right for one night, but the next day, he's always back. He knows that she's dead, but he also thinks she still talks to him. I don't understand how he can believe those two things at the same time, but he
does.

I'm worried he's losing his marbles; he only had a couple of ordinaries to begin
with.

The day of his mother's funeral arrives. We take our seats and the humanist minister at the lectern burbles on and I can't follow what he says, because it just doesn't matter. He didn't talk to us about what to say. There are only four mourners in the chapel: me, Mr Green, Joe, and, alone on the other side of the aisle, Mrs Joe's brother. He sits straight-backed in his double-breasted suit, eyes fixed on some point on the wall. If he's listening to the sermon, he gives no sign. There's no movement, no expression. He looks more like an old soldier than a man who made a living running a removals
firm.

There are no hymns or prayers. She didn't go in for that stuff. Why would she? And so we simply have a moment's silence before the curtains open and the casket is swallowed. As we walk out, the only sound is of our footsteps on the hard floor of the aisle. The minister offers his hand at the door. I ignore
him.

Outside, Mrs Joe's brother gets into his car and drives off. Since he went to the house that night last week, he has made everything a mere formality, perhaps out of shock or maybe just the sense that the best he could do was be rid of a bad job as quickly as possible. Amazingly – after four decades or more – Joe recognized his uncle on the doorstep and promptly flipped out. Somehow, he chased him to the next-door neighbours' house. It was then I got the call. Thank God I was in. I arrived to find Mrs Joe's brother hiding in the young couple's living room while their kid screamed blue murder. Joe was in the lane, yelling his mother's view of various family disputes that surely aren't important to her now. Joe never did learn the lessons of what really matters and when, so I had to pin him to the wall and let him kick my shins, while his uncle scuttled to the car and screeched away. Later, I found his wing mirror lying in a puddle, and a great scratch down my driver's-side
door.

‘Do you think we'll see him again?' I ask Mr Green, as the black Jaguar sweeps past
us.

‘I'd say that was fairly unlikely,
son.'

‘Can we trust him with the solicitors and that?'

‘We'll have to, won't we? It's officially none of our business.' He fumbles with the car door handle; I go over and help him. ‘Take me to the pub,' he
says.

‘Are you sure? What about him?' I nod over at Joe, who just stands with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, staring at his
feet.

‘Bring him with us.' Then he throws his walking stick onto the back seat and slowly climbs in after
it.

I close the door for him and call over to Joe, ‘C'mon, mate. It's time to
go.'

‘No one came,' he
says.

‘Don't worry about that. You were there – that's all that matters. Come to the pub with
us.'

‘I'm barred.'

‘That was ten years and two landlords ago. They won't remember. Anyway, it wasn't your fault. Get
in.'

‘Is
he
going?'

‘Your uncle?
No.'

‘He's a nasty piece of work, that
one.'

‘He's gone. Forget about
him.'

He looks over his shoulder to the crematorium, looks back at me. ‘I don't want to leave
her.'

‘She's not here, mate. She's not here. Come with
us.'

For the first time today, he starts to cry, but he gets in the car and we drive
away.

—

At the pub, I buy the drinks: a pint for Mr Green and a shandy for Joe, whose mother never let him get drunk. It's about six o'clock – Mrs Joe's was the last funeral of the day and the drive back took half an hour – so the pub is still sparsely populated, but people are drifting in. The three of us drink, Joe quietly, Mr Green and me earnestly, and mull over our individual regrets. In here, Joe looks like a rabbit who finds himself in the fox's den. I could reach out and put my hand on his shoulder or something, but I don't. After a little while, he gets up and goes to the toilet.

Mr Green leans over to me. ‘Lydia came to see me the other
day.'

‘Who?'

‘The panto lady.'

‘Oh,
her.'

‘Aye. She says that Joe worries some of the others. Wondered if we'd mind keeping him away from rehearsals in future.'

‘He'd be heartbroken. I hope you told her to go and do
one.'

‘I was slightly more diplomatic than that.' He sucks his teeth.

‘So he's not kicked
out?'

‘No. Not
yet.'

‘Good.'

‘She asked me about you too. It seems somebody has been whispering to her about your chequered past.'

‘Jesus.'

‘Well, I told her you're “fully rehabilitated” and “an upstanding member of the community”. She liked that. I think she's a
Guardian
reader. Listen…' He pauses, taps the tabletop. ‘I called Social Services.'

‘About
Joe?'

‘Of course about
Joe.'

‘Right.' Joe is scared of the authorities, and I'm not sure I like the sound of this.
‘So?'

‘So nothing. They listened sympathetically, issued forth some platitudes. You know what a platitude is, don't
you?'

‘Yes, Mr Green, I know what a platitude
is.'

‘Good. Well, I just wanted you to know that I've set the wheels in motion, or I'm trying to at least.'

‘Right.'

‘Don't worry – they're not going to drag him away by the hair. They're not that efficient, for a start. I was a teacher, so I've dealt with these people before. It'll be hard enough to get them to do anything, let alone something drastic. They're overworked and under-resourced.'

‘Well, as long as you know what you're doing.'

‘Unfortunately, in this regard I
do.'

I pick up a beer mat and turn it over in my hands because they're itching for something to do. I suppose I should be glad; if Joe gets help, maybe he'll stop coming to my house at all hours. Then again, that assumes the ‘help' is any
help
.

‘Relax,' he says to me. ‘I'll handle them. You just keep doing what you're doing.'

‘That's what I'm scared
of.'

‘That and everything else, I should imagine.'

‘Aye. That and everything else.'

Joe gets back from the bog and slumps once more into his chair. He keeps looking around himself as if he expects attack from any angle. Under the table, I nudge his shin with my toe. ‘Chill out, mate. Nobody's going to bother you. You're with
me.'

‘It's not civilized in here,' he pronounces.

‘Joe, that's the point. If it were civilized in here, no bugger would come.'

‘It's full of ruffians,' he says, and sips at his shandy.

Mr Green reaches into his inside pocket and withdraws his wallet. He inspects its contents, then pokes a tenner into my hand. ‘I think you and I need a large whisky each.'

‘I think you might be right.'

I know he's just had a stroke, but that's his business, and if he wants to drink himself to death, I'll be right behind him. I'm watching the barmaid push a glass to the optic when the muscles in my shoulders and neck suddenly stiffen. A familiar voice comes through the door behind me. If this were a western, I'd lower my hand to my hip and prepare to spin on my heel the moment the talking stops. Instead, I quietly ask for a bag of cheese and onion crisps and some dry-roasted
nuts.

Back at our table, I push the snacks towards Joe and sip at my whisky. Barry sits with his back to us, so I don't think he has seen me yet. His companion is at the bar and he looks familiar, but I'm not sure: a big guy with a hint of belly hanging over the top of his jeans. I've seen him around. He looks like a ruffian.

He swaggers back to Barry with a pint in each hand, sits down, starts to drink. It's not far from here to there – maybe eight or nine paces. They're laughing at something. I could cover that distance quickly; Barry wouldn't see me coming, and his mate wouldn't have time to work out what was happening. I could punch Barry in the back of the head and break my glass in the other guy's face before he was even on his feet, but that's not going to happen.

My knee judders up and
down.

‘Are you all right?' Mr Green is talking to
me.

‘What? Yeah. I'm fine. It's just…nothing.' I pick up the whisky and wish I'd got a pint instead; I need something
wet.

‘You looked like you were miles away.'

‘No such luck.'

‘Do you know those
men?'

I look round. Barry turns in his chair, smiles, and tips his glass towards me. I do nothing. He gets up and saunters
over.

‘All right, mate?'

I say nothing.

‘Sorry I didn't stop the other night. I was in a rush.'

What you mean, I think, is that you didn't have back-up. I look past Barry, to the big guy; he's watching, arms folded.

‘I hear you're back in work. With that lad from Mac's lot. What's his name?
Lee.'

‘How did you know that?'

‘Ways and means.'

‘Shut up, Barry. You're all piss-steam.'

‘Am I now?' He looks at Joe. ‘I see you're still doing your bit for charity.'

‘Baz, we've just been to a funeral. If you want to talk to me, you know where I live. Now get lost.'

‘Nasty bruise, that.'

‘Thanks for your concern.'

‘You're welcome. I'll see you later.'

He goes and sits with his mate again.

Mr Green looks at me. ‘What was all that about?'

‘Nothing for you two to worry over.'

Joe has gone very still and small.

‘Are you all right, mate?' I ask
him.

‘I don't like him,' he says quietly.

‘I know you don't. I'm not that keen on him either. C'mon, drink up and we'll go and have some dinner.'