The Immaculate (22 page)

He had found his bikers. Predictably, there were six of them, the four non-pool players sitting around a table in the corner. They were showering their two compatriots with either derision or admiration, depending on the shots they played. In return, the pool players were responding to their audience, bowing exaggeratedly or punching the air when receiving adulation, fielding insults and firing them back with equal vigour. It looked very much a closed community, a clique. Jack was glad he hadn't walked in among them. Not that he was worried about violence, or even hostility. He would simply have felt awkward—it would have been like invading a Women's Institute meeting or entering a train carriage full of nuns.

He stepped back from the door and picked up the telephone receiver. Placing his beer on the shelf below the phone, he fed a twenty-pence piece into the slot and dialed Gail's number. Once again it rang and rang without reply. “What's wrong with the answering machine all of a sudden?” he murmured and replaced the receiver with a sigh. He waited for his unused money to drop through, then tried her mobile, with the same result as before. Frustrated, he used his last twenty pence to dial his own number. Perhaps she would be there. She'd promised to call in and check his post if she got the chance. He listened to the thin trilling and thought, My phone in London is ringing at this very moment. I wish I was there to answer it.

He was, in a sense; or at least, his voice on the answering machine was. “Hi, this is Jack Stone. I'm afraid I'm dismembering a body in the kitchen and can't come to the phone right now, but if you'd like to leave a message, I'll call you back as soon as I've cleaned up the mess.”

He waited for the beep and said, “Gail, hi, it's Jack. I've been trying to call you, but haven't been able to get through. I know I only saw you twelve hours ago, but I'm missing you already. I'll call you at home about eleven tonight. If you're not there I'll want to know why.” That was supposed to sound flippant, but it came out stern and possessive. “Oops, that wasn't supposed to come across like it did. Er . . . I love you, Gail, and . . . I'll speak to you later. Bye.” He put the phone down, feeling hollow and dissatisfied.

He sat down in a bay beneath a sweep of orange curtain and sipped his drink. The pub was beginning to fill up a little more. He took out the notepad and pen that he always kept in his jacket pocket. He had done no work for three days and was starting to feel restless. It was a familiar emotion, and one he found hard to shake, even on holiday, even when he was supposed to be relaxing. Gail was hugely supportive of his work, but even she got pissed off occasionally. Sometimes they would arrange to go out in the evening, but if he'd had an unproductive day he'd ring up and say, “Look, do you mind if we cancel tonight? I really want to get this chapter finished.” Invariably they would have an argument and she'd slam the phone down, and then he'd feel too unsettled to work anyway. And so he'd stomp around behaving like a temperamental artist or he'd drive round to her flat in Tottenham and try to make it up to her.

The book he was writing at the moment was called
The Laughter
and centred around two clowns, one good, one evil. The good clown was called Cyril and the bad clown Popsy. Popsy was the leader of the Secret Society of Comedians, whose aim was to capture the world's laughter and imprison it. Although Jack wrote mostly on computer, he preferred to write longhand in public places. Taking a laptop into a pub or restaurant always struck him as horribly pretentious. He opened his notepad now, read the brief notes he'd made, and then wrote:
It was never the lion's intention to eat Raoul.
He squinted at the sentence, sat back, swallowed a mouthful of beer, placed the glass back on the coaster and leaned forward. The next sentence was already forming, poised to spring from brain to paper, when a voice said, “You're Jack Stone, aren't you?”

He tried to grab the shattered pieces of the sentence as they slipped through the mesh of his mind, but surprise made him clumsy and he lost them. He looked up, frowning his annoyance. The sight of beauty quashed his anger. The girl was perhaps seventeen, with stylishly tousled reddish-blonde hair, huge blue eyes and very full, very red lips. Her skin glowed with the kind of pure, vibrant health that made other faces seem haggard and grey even when they weren't. Her bone structure was a mathematician's dream, the angles were so perfect. She had a long neck, delicate fingers tipped with red fingernails and long coltish legs poured into the tightest of jeans. Her upper body was clothed in a white collarless blouse and a well-worn biker's jacket. She smelled . . .
exciting
—the faint tang of black leather, a subtle soap or perfume, and some underlying secret scent that was muskier, spicier, like paprika and marijuana combined.

Jack breathed in her smell and tried not to be too obvious about it. “Er . . . yes, I am,” he replied in answer to her question.

She nodded, not shyly but with confidence, self-satisfaction. “Knew it,” she muttered, dragged a stool from beneath the table and sat down. She leaned forward on her elbows, long hair tumbling forward (Wow, that smell!), and without asking, spun Jack's notepad round and began reading it. “What's this?” she said. “New book?”

He felt immediately defensive, vulnerable, as if she were scanning his innermost thoughts. “Er, yes,” he said. His hand reached out and he said, “Do you mind?” before snatching the notepad from beneath her gaze.

She squinted at him, managing to look both innocent and arrogant. “What's it about?” she asked.

Argh, the dreaded question. Avoiding it, Jack said, “Look, I don't even know who you are.”

“Tracey Bates,” she said. “My dad's the landlord here. I've read all your books. I helped your aunt clean the house this weekend.”

Of course. Tracey. The landlord's daughter. He was aware that something she had said just then had rankled him, as though a discord had been struck. But the girl was talking again now, giving him no time to backtrack.

“Some of your stuff is really weird,” she said. “Brilliant, but weird. Where do you get your ideas from? I reckon you must do drugs to get ideas like that.”

Jack felt uncomfortable, but tried not to show it. “No,” he said, “I don't take drugs, apart from a little alcohol and tobacco. If I took drugs I'd never be able to write at all. You don't take them, do you?”

She shrugged, picked up a coaster, tapped it twice on the table and then put it down again. Raising her fabulous blue eyes to him she asked, “Are you married?”

Jack felt both amused and, despite himself, a little alarmed. Was that a chat-up line? Was this . . . this sex kitten trying to seduce him? Clearing his throat he said, “No, I'm not married.”

“But you have a girlfriend.” She stated the fact as though she knew.

“Yes,” said Jack.

“What's her name?”

“What do you want to know for?” Jack wished he could shake off his feeling of edginess.

The girl rolled her eyes as though he were being unreasonably obtuse. “I just wondered,” she said. “Just making conversation, that's all.”

Jack looked down at his beer, ran a finger through the condensation on the glass. “Her name's Gail.”

Tracey pulled a face as if to say: Not much of a name, is it? “What's she like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes, she's very pretty. I think so, anyway.”

The girl smiled slyly. “Prettier than me?”

Jack felt his face becoming hot. He forced a smile, tried to keep his voice light. “Look,” he said, “why are you asking me all these questions?”

Tracey made a face. “I've told you,” she said, “just making conversation.” There was a silence between them for a moment, then she said, “You can ask me questions if you want. I'm not bothered.”

Jack shrugged, snorted a laugh. “Look,” he said, “I'm sorry. I'm a bit touchy just now. It's been a bit difficult these past few days.”

“Yeah, I know, your dad died. Your aunt told me. But you haven't seen your dad for years, have you? You never came back here after you went off to London.”

Was she accusing him of neglect or merely stating a fact? Her tone was neutral; her face revealed nothing.

“You'd make a great social worker,” Jack told her, smiling.

She scowled as if he'd said something tiresome and irrelevant. “What are you on about?”

Jack sighed inwardly. “Nothing,” he said. “Forget it. Just my feeble attempt at humour.”

She tossed her head, unimpressed, and her fabulous smell washed over him again. “So, what's this new book called?”

“The Laughter.”
Before she could respond he tried to grab the initiative. “You haven't told me what you do?”

“No.”

“So . . . what
do
you do?”

She shrugged. “I'm a student. A levels.”

“Oh, yeah. What subjects?”

“English lit, art and history.” She reeled these off with a sigh as if it were a question she had been asked a million times before and of which she was now heartily sick.

“Hey,” Jack said. “Same subjects that I did.”

“Really,” she said, unimpressed. “Whoopi-doo.”

Jack was beginning to feel annoyed now. He wished this girl would go away. She was being as offhand with him as if he were a creep pestering her at the bar, but it had been she who had approached him for God's sake! If she was a fan, then maybe she found Jack Stone in person disappointing, or perhaps her rudeness was a way of covering up her true, more vulnerable emotions. But Jack was not really that interested in excuses. The fact was, the girl was arrogant, and he was getting fed up with her. “Was there something you wanted to see me about specifically?” he asked and immediately thought, Christ, I sound like a headmaster.

She shrugged again, and pouted. “Not really,” she said. “I just saw you in here so I thought I'd come across and say hi.”

“Oh, right,” said Jack, and almost added: Well, now you've said it. He smiled at her and picked up his glass. As he swallowed a mouthful of beer he heard a bellow of laughter from the bar and glanced in that direction.

What he saw almost made him choke. At the same instant he realised what it was that Tracey had said earlier. Leaning against the bar, chatting to a couple of his regulars, was the landlord, Tracey's father. He was fatter, older and balder than Jack remembered him, but his identity was unmistakable.

The landlord of the Seven Stars was Patty Bates.

For an instant after seeing his old adversary, Jack was reduced to a state of almost schoolboyish alarm. A thought flared in his mind: I've got to get out of here. Then the adult barged in, pushing the child aside, speaking in a calm, reasonable voice. Don't be silly, Jack, you're a grown man now. Bates is a responsible citizen, a publican. He's hardly likely to start beating up his customers, is he?

Jack relaxed—a little. He picked up his glass and took another gulp from it, peering at Bates over the rim. His old enemy looked older than his thirty-six years. His florid complexion and expansive gut were evidence of his love for his own beer. He had always had thick hair, but now he was balding rapidly, and what hair he did have was cropped close to his scalp. And yet strangely, for all this, Jack thought that Bates hadn't really changed that much. He was wearing a grey Adidas sweatshirt and ill-fitting jeans, the kind that had a knee-level crotch and were low-slung at the back to reveal a bulging, hairy expanse of bum cleavage.

Tracey, sitting across from Jack, said, “Seen something interesting?”

In the last few moments he had almost forgotten she was there. Now he turned his attention back to her and thought he saw a gleam in the girl's eyes that unsettled him. It was so fleeting he was not even sure he
had
seen it, and yet he couldn't shake off the feeling that she had been gazing at him with an expression of . . . triumph? Eagerness? As if she had been relishing his shock. He considered telling her the truth, making a joke of it, but unease prevented him from doing so. He also considered, albeit briefly, wandering over to Patty Bates and saying, “Remember me?”

In the end, however, he simply shook his head and smiled. “No,” he said, “just looking around.”

She raised her eyebrows and her face slipped back into its expression of sullen arrogance, which she wore like a symbol of her youth.

Jack sighed. All at once he felt tired, impatient. He had had a lot to cope with today, and felt a need to speak to Gail, or, failing that, to be on his own. He looked at his watch, drained his glass. “Look, it's been nice meeting you,” he said, “but I've got to go.”

She shrugged, striking the pose of the nihilistic teenager. “Okay,” she said as if she couldn't care less. “See you.”

Jack felt an urge to blurt out scornful laughter at her attitude, or to shake her angrily and tell her how artificial she was, how transparent. But she would probably only have glared at him and curled her lip and sneered that he was too old to understand. Each successive generation reinvented rebellion and claimed it as their own. Jack had been there himself, fifteen years ago, during the heady, vibrant days of the Madchester scene. He'd believed then that the music of bands like The Smiths and the Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses could change the world, that a night of noise and sweat and energy was an earth-shattering event. It all seemed so fatuous now, so insignificant. The thought depressed him: had he really become so
adult,
so
mature?
He hadn't even noticed it happening. Time was like a pickpocket, sneaking up behind you, stealing away your youth. You didn't realise it was gone until it was too late.

He left the pub without looking over at Patty Bates and his cronies, and so did not know, nor did he have any desire to know, whether he was noticed and recognised. When he stepped into the parking lot the cold air punched into him, making him catch his breath. He wondered how a Neanderthal like Bates could have fathered such a stunning daughter. Tracey must have inherited her looks from her mother's side of the family. He got into his car, grimacing at the coldness of the seat, and started up the engine. He pulled out of the lot and turned right on a whim, deciding to take a spin around the village before heading home.