Pleasant Vices (15 page)

Alan was well into rebuilding the wall by the time Jenny and the children got home. As she turned into the driveway, Jenny's car wheels whizzed up dust and grit which fell, irritatingly, into Alan's mortar, as carefully mixed and prepared as a delicate
Hollandaise
. In the blast of air from the car, the Reader's Digest DIY guide fell from its propped-up position on the heap of bricks and landed in Alan's bucket of water, rendering him furious and dripping. Marcus, who was interested in anything that looked messy, clambered out of the car and came to inspect Alan's progress and see if he could join in. ‘The bricks are a different colour,' he pointed out.

‘I'm hoping no-one will notice,' Alan replied, slapping another trowel full of mortar on the wall.

‘Well Marcus noticed,' Polly said smartly, watching her father turn interestingly brick-coloured himself.

Alan gritted his teeth. ‘Why don't you kids go into the house and get something to eat?' he said, his eye on Harriet, who was inspecting her shoes after walking into a cementy puddle.

‘We had lunch. We had McDonald's,' Sebastian said with great pride. Poor kids, thought Alan suddenly, Carol and Paul probably make the twins avert their eyes from hamburger bars. Probably think they'll catch something nasty in there, like an undesirable accent.

Jenny called the children in and then, seeing the state of their shoes from treading in the wall debris, promptly sent them outside again, round to the back of the house to play in the garden. She stood in the doorway watching Alan stirring the cement and decided that, from her point of view, it was not the ideal moment to mention Serena's phone call. When she did tell him, she wanted him to have nowhere to look but straight at her, no possibility of shifty guilt being diverted into concentrating on lining up the next brick.

‘Let's go out on to the Common!' Polly yelled, dashing off and making for the back gate. Sebastian and Marcus hesitated, looked at each other and at the sprinting bodies of Harriet and Polly far down the garden, and followed.

‘She'd better not find out,' Sebastian warned, thinking of his tyrannical mother, as he and Marcus jogged nervously down the path after the two girls towards the open gate and the forbidden Common.

‘She won't find out from me,' Marcus retorted. ‘But she won't like my shoes.' As he ran he looked down at his feet, where a thin crust of cement was dulling the highly polished leather.

‘It's her own fault, she should have let us wear our trainers. Anyway, she won't blame you, she'll blame Polly's dad for making such a mess. He's got that stuff all over the pavement. It's worse than dog.'

Out of the garden on to the Common the boys stopped, and, like puppies, stood sniffing the unfamiliar air. There were smells of bracken and blossom, and damp, oozy grass. Padding after some unsuspecting prey, one of the Mathiesons' Siamese cats, enviably free from parental rules, stalked through clumps of early bluebells.

‘We're over here!' called Polly's voice from behind a hawthorn bush.

‘Come and find us!' added Harriet in a taunting sing-song.

Sebastian and Marcus took a swift look round to make sure there wasn't a marauding parent in sight, and leapt into the dense shrubbery.

Harriet pounced out from behind the hawthorn and grabbed Marcus, twisting his arm. ‘You're Marcus. I can tell because you're wearing the red sweatshirt. What happens when you haven't got any clothes on? How do people tell the difference between you then?' Marcus, unused to fending off girls and somehow sure he'd heard that you shouldn't have to, stayed passive as Harriet wrestled him to the floor and sat on his chest.

‘That's the whole point, stupid. We're identical,' Sebastian told her smugly. ‘You can't tell.' He kept a wary distance from Polly and grinned at Harriet, sitting down and pulling at dandelion heads.

‘Seb's hair is a bit longer,' Harriet judged, inspecting them both closely. ‘And I think he might have more freckles.'

‘I'm a roundhead. Seb's not,' Marcus, in a slightly strangled voice gasped from his position as Harriet's cushion. She had her legs apart and across him, crushing him solidly, the rivets on the back of her jeans digging into an exposed piece of flesh under his sweatshirt. His back would be all grass-stained, he thought, desperate to be allowed to his feet.

‘What's a roundhead?' Polly asked. ‘Do you meanlike Cavaliers and Oliver Cromwell and history?'

‘Being a roundhead doesn't make you look different,' Harriet said scornfully. ‘Not in this century anyway,' she added grandly with all the authority of a recent school project.

‘Oh yes it does!' Marcus protested, suddenly catching sight, too late, of warning signals from his brother.

Sebastian groaned. ‘Shut it Marc!' he yelled, as he felt Polly watching him blush. Her inevitable next remark was, as he knew it would be, ‘OK show us then! Which bit of you is it that is a roundhead?'

The two boys were silent. It hadn't occurred to Marcus that there were people on the planet who didn't know his school's terms for circumcised and uncircumcised cocks. He and Sebastian looked at each other, and the two little girls waited. Their silence told Polly exactly which bit she needed to see. She was perfectly used to seeing Alan casually and uninterestingly naked around the house, though not Ben these days, who scuttled rapidly from bedroom to bathroom, with his bathrobe belt tightly knotted, just in case. Polly's curiosity was on full alert. She knew what a penis looked like, and was haughtily scornful of girls at school who dared admit they didn't but she had never come across the possibility that some penises were different from others. In the interests of research she knew it was crucial to find out how. Suddenly Polly leapt on Marcus and started tugging at his tracksuit bottoms.

‘Gerrofff!' roared Marcus, wriggling desperately under the bulk of Harriet.

Sebastian hurled himself on top of the heap and the four of them fought intensely for a moment in a tangle.

‘If you show us, we'll show you something interesting, really, truly interesting,' Polly coaxed, sitting up and pulling dandelion seeds from her hair. ‘So interesting you'll be able to show off to all the boys at your school about it.'

Sebastian, from the safety of the far side of an oak sapling, thought about the bits of girls he hadn't yet seen, that probably no-one at school had seen, and wouldn't they all be jealous if that was what Polly was promising. Harriet was giving her a doubtful look, as if she wasn't sure she was prepared to go along with this. Sebastian didn't really mind showing his willy, his mum and Matron at school looked at it all the time, just to see if the end was getting tight like Marcus's had and would have to be trimmed.

‘OK what will you show us?' he asked, prepared to bargain.

‘Well,' Polly said slowly, ‘have you ever seen . . .' she looked across at Harriet, making sure she could count on her joining in. The two boys leaned forward, eagerly, and Polly asked in a loud, excited whisper, ‘Have you ever seen a dead body?'

Marcus gasped, Seb looked sceptical and Harriet stared intently at Polly, wondering which way to play it. She rather thought, on balance, she'd prefer to show the boys her fanny than have to go with them and look at a corpse.

‘Yeah. I know where there's one, really near, near where you're sitting now!' Polly continued, her eyes blazing with dramatic importance. ‘And it's only me that knows, so you have to do what I say if you want to see it.'

Marcus felt prickly with fear. He didn't at all want to see anyone dead, but even more he didn't want Polly to know this. There was a moment of silence, while decisions were made.

‘OK,' Sebastian said simply, standing up and lowering his trousers. ‘Come on Marcus, get it out.'

Reluctantly, but with a sigh of inevitability, Marcus stood up and fumbled with his trousers. He wondered if Polly would touch it, and if it would go up at all. He reminded himself how envious the boys in his form would be when he told them. He hoped he could rely on Seb to exaggerate a good bit, make it all sound infinitely ruder than the cool, silent, clinical inspection that Polly and Harriet were now making.

After a few minutes, Sebastian shoved Harriet, who was peering horrendously closely, back into the grass and hurriedly re-dressed himself. ‘That's enough. Now let's see this dead person,' he demanded.

‘Oh, I didn't say it was a person, did I? I'm sure I didn't . . .' Polly said, sneaking away towards the garden fences and giving the boys a sly look.

Harriet, relieved, caught on, and giggled. ‘No, she didn't say it was a
person,
she never said
that
!' she told the boys contemptuously, skipping towards Polly and safety.

‘I will show you a body though. There's a bit of old rabbit that a fox left . . .' Polly called, laughing, over her shoulder. It's round this corner . . . and she disappeared at a run behind a clump of blackthorn. Sebastian and Marcus dashed after the girls, hellbent on revenge. From out of sight there came a blood-curdling duet of screams.

‘They're putting it on,' Marcus said. ‘You just wait till we get you!' he yelled.

‘Yeah, we'll get their knickers, they deserve it,' Sebastian said, hurling himself painfully through the blackthorn. Then he stopped, and looked at what had made the girls scream. Harriet had her hand over her mouth, looking as if she might be sick. Polly's eyes were wild with terror. The four of them stood and gazed at the stretched-out, gape-mouthed, twisted body of old Mrs Fingell.

‘Mugged,' was Paul Mathieson's immediate and authoritative verdict, although Mrs Fingell showed no obvious sign of injury. Paul, Carol, Jenny, Sue and the four children stood around the still and solid body like a silent gathering at a wake. Harvey and Laura Benstone were picking their careful way across the damp grass towards the group, respectfully shushing their oblivious little girls who whooped and shrieked in the unaccustomed freedom of the great open space. Sue's dog, an aged and bad-tempered Airedale, whined and tugged at its lead, furious at having its daily snuffle through the rabbit warrens interrupted, and irreverently eager to take curious sniffs at the body.

‘Alan's phoning the police, and an ambulance,' Jenny whispered, shivering and rather frightened in the presence of the corpse.

‘Not much use, getting an ambulance,' Paul commented bluntly. ‘The police will bring their own mortuary van. Of course not yet, seeing as it's murder . . .' he said, proud of his extensive knowledge.

Bloody know-all, Jenny thought, moving closer to Sue and sliding her arm through hers for warmth and comfort.

‘Are we sure she's dead?' Sue suddenly asked. ‘I mean, should we do the kiss of life or something?' There was a distinct rustling of the grass as feet were guiltily shuffled. No-one was actually prepared to touch Mrs Fingell and check for signs of breathing and pulse. Even when alive, she had carried a certain aroma of decay.

‘Oh God, I feel awfully faint,' Laura Benstone squeaked feebly, pressing a limp hand to her forehead.

‘We'll go home, darling. Take the girls away from this. They really shouldn't see,' Harvey said eagerly, pulling at Laura's arm. Then he turned to the others, feeling he should apologize for shameful curiosity. ‘We only came in case there was anything we could do . . .' he murmured. Jenny felt Sue's body twitch slightly, and realized she was, typically, trying not to giggle. ‘We could take her dog perhaps?' Harvey continued, desperate to be useful, and bumbling off after Mrs Fingell's scuttling little orange poodle which was happily sniffing around the base of an oak tree.

‘They'll have to cordon off this part of the Common,' Paul was saying, gazing around. ‘One of those little tents they'll have, too, to cover the body. We shouldn't really be here, you know, trampling on Evidence.' Jenny was watching Paul's face, which was vibrant with excitement and importance. ‘As your Neighbourhood Watch representative,' he started to say pompously, getting well into his stride, ‘I feel I should recommend that you all return to your homes and wait to be summoned for evidence. I'll have to wait here, naturally. The police will no doubt wish to interview you all in due course . . .' He was interrupted by a loud sniff from Carol, who, to Jenny's amazement, was actually crying.

‘Oh what is happening to the world?' Carol suddenly wailed dramatically, putting a protective arm round the shoulder of each of her highly embarrassed twins. ‘A poor old lady can't even walk her pet on the Common without being mugged and murdered by a bunch of louts from the estate!' She looked up, as if appealing for a response from the heavens.

Sue covered her face with her hand and shook helplessly, and Paul smiled across with unctuous sympathy, not realizing she was hiding an attack of the giggles. Jenny nudged her to stop, feeling a sinful and inappropriate smile creeping over her own face. Some people, she recalled, do have this nervous reaction to terrible things, an outrageous and uncontrollable desire to laugh.

The police arrived, swarming across the Common in a number large enough to satisfy Paul. He strode off to meet them, proudly confident that this time, at last, he had something that wasn't a waste of their time.

‘Shouldn't we cover her up?' he heard the voice of Polly saying as he came level with the now-familiar police sergeant. An angry yowl of protest and series of shocked screams followed, and Paul and the police rushed to the little group. Sue was now laughing openly, clutching Jenny for support. Carol's tears had halted abruptly and she was now staring with silent fury at Mrs Fingell, who was thrashing around beneath Jenny's Barbour.

‘Where's the corpse?' the police sergeant asked Paul.

‘She was dead . . . ! Really, a minute ago . . .' he babbled.

‘Dead drunk more like,' said a young constable, winking at Sue. He bent down to take a closer look at Mrs Fingell and she rolled on to her side, revealing an empty sherry bottle.