Plender (12 page)

“So that’s it,” said Kate. “That’s all I get to know, is it?”

I opened the door.

“He came back and took the car away,” I said. “To get it repaired.”

“Without telling us? He just came back and walked in and out while we were in bed?”

I nodded.

“He’d been drinking,” I said. “He was upset. He wanted to make amends.”

I walked into the lounge and over to the drinks cabinet. I poured a large scotch. Kate stood in the doorway, staring at me.

“What are you doing?” she said.

I drank the scotch and poured another.

“You do know what time it is.”

I sat down on the leather settee and took another drink.

“I hope you’re not just going to let him bring it back and leave it at that,” Kate said.

I put the scotch down and lit a cigarette.

“You are, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re just going to say thank you very much for taking our car away and not telling us and frightening us half to death.”

“I’ll say something to him,” I said.

“I’ll bet,” said Kate. “Well if you don’t I certainly will. When is he coming? Tonight?”

“I’m meeting him at the Ferry Boat.”

“Why there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was his idea.”

I finished my drink and stood up.

“I thought you were going to church,” I said.

Kate gave me a long look.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Waiting to make a phone call?”

I didn’t answer.

“Surely she won’t be expecting a call this early?”

I walked over to the cabinet and poured another drink. For Christ’s sake, go to church.

“It’s too late for church,” said Kate. “But not to worry. I’ll take the kids down to the river. That should give you plenty of time.”

Kate walked over to the door.

“By the way,” she said, “Millers delivered yesterday, so there’s no danger of your running out.”

She closed the door behind her.

I emptied the glass and poured another.

Plender knew.

PLENDER

I dialed a number.

“Hello?” said Harry.

“Harry,” I said, “I understand Mr. Gurney brought in some work this morning.”

“That’s right, Mr. Plender.”

“Much of it, is there?”

“Not too much. Why?”

“Well in that case I was wondering if I could come down and borrow your darkroom for half an hour this afternoon. I’ve got some stuff of my own and I’d rather like to do it myself.”

“I understand, Mr. Plender.”

“About three o”clock be all right?”

“Yes, that should be okay, Mr. Plender.”

“Thanks a lot, Harry,” I said. “Thanks very much.”

“See you at three, then,” said Harry.

“At three,” I said.

KNOTT

Kate drove.

The kids sat in the back of the Hillman and I sat next to Kate in the front.

Kate said to me, “Would you mind opening your window?”

I turned my head to look at her.

“The whisky fumes are killing me,” she said.

I didn’t answer. I just rolled down the window and went back to staring at the road.

After a while Kate said, “Daddy’s sure to notice.”

Kate slowed down to take a sharp corner.

“You had to, didn’t you? You just had to get like this, today of all days.”

“I’m all right,” I said.

A line of beech trees flashed towards the car. I tried to focus on them but it was no use. I was too far gone.

But at the same time I was in that particular alcoholic state in which a part of the mind, the rational, sober, remainder, can detach itself from the rest of the soggy mass and observe the imprecisions of the body and mind of that grotesque character who happens to be oneself.

The part of my mind that was outside of myself was gently amused by the situation of the lolling figure it observed in the front seat of the Hillman. Mouth sagging, eyes blank with fear, fingers convulsing like a dying man’s, fuddled, unable to cope with the events of the last twenty hours, and with those events yet to come, unable to shape his thoughts into any kind of logical pattern, trying desperately to organise some kind of defence against the accumulation of shocks and frights still to make their assault on his system.

But the only thought that surfaced above the treacle in his head was the one that said Plender knows.

Of course I could always go to the police. Now there was a thought. Another one. That made two. I’d had that one last night. I could go to the police. Tell them what had happened. Tell them that I was on the way to see them, to bring them Eileen, when I’d had this accident, and so instead of bringing them the body, as it
was
late, you know, I thought I’d better wait till the morning, as it was late, and you’ll never guess what happened next . . .

I began to giggle. Kate made one of her end-of-tether noises.

“What’s Daddy laughing at, Mummy?” Nicola said. Even she wasn’t addressing herself to me.

“Just a private joke,” I said, as Kate turned the car into her father’s drive.

PLENDER

When the prints had dried I laid them out on Harry’s table, then I went over to where I’d hung my jacket and took out my cigarettes and lighter and lit up. I blew out the smoke and thought how easy it had been to get back into the warehouse and let myself into Knott’s studio. I’d washed the glasses and emptied the ashtrays and smoothed over the bed in the cubicle and I’d had a good look round to make sure there’d been no scarves or gloves or anything like that left lying about.

Then I’d walked over to the camera set up on it’s tripod, and I’d noticed that on the little Habitat table next to the tripod there’d been some rolls of exposed film. I’d examined the camera and in the camera there’d been another roll of film that had been completely exposed too. In front of the camera, where it had been pointing, there’d been a large sheepskin rug, all creased up, as though it had been rolled on, a high stool and a divan, a Put-u-up kind of thing, opened out to the full. I’d also noticed that on the camera there’d been a time exposure extension.

So I’d taken the film out of the camera and picked up the other rolls of exposed film and put them all in my pocket.

After that I’d found a plastic bucket and some rags and I’d got the Fairy Liquid from the sink where Knott made his tea and coffee and I’d gone downstairs into the warehouse and cleaned up down there. Then I’d put the rags in the polythene that I kept my car tools wrapped in and that had been that.

I walked over to Harry’s table and looked at the prints.

You could see the way the evening had gone from looking at them.

First, just pin-up stuff. Even looked as though it was legitimate enough for his catalogue—crotch shots in different sets of underwear. Then it got a bit more provocative, more girly magazine type of stuff without the retouching. In most of these he’d got her to wear a gym slip. Then there were a few covering the stages of her removing her pants and then the dirty stuff started. He’d got her to do all sorts to herself. And finally there were some with him in, the time exposure ones. He must have told her how to operate it herself, because he couldn’t have done it, not tied down to the divan like that, with a pair of panties round his knees.

If I’d known Peter and Susan had started walking out together, then I’d never have asked her out with me. I’d thought it was just friendship, I really had.

What had happened was this: When Peter’s father had got a better job, they’d moved up on to Westfield Road. Susan Armitage lived in the big house right at the top, where the road turns into the track that leads to Worrals Farm and the old quarry. I used to bike home from school with Peter and we’d stop at the bottom of Westfield Road and sit on our bikes and talk for a bit before I’d turn off down the hill and he’d go off up Westfield Road. This was the best part of the day to me, although I always tried hard not to show it. Just sitting there on our bikes, able to talk without Peter making me feel small like he did during the day in front of his A stream mates. We’d perhaps talk about what had happened in each other’s classes during the day, or make arrangements to go to the pictures or to the park (although I always hoped it would be to the pic-tures because only a few of his A stream mates would be there, whereas most of them would be at the park).

And then Susan had started biking home with us. She was in the A stream too, in Peter’s form, and her dad had a lot of money. He owned a good few newspaper shops, one in Brumby and the rest in the outlying villages. But my mam said that if he’d gone and done his bit in the army like everybody else had he wouldn’t be so well off now.

It was awkward the first time it happened, the first time she biked home with us. I’d been waiting at the bottom of the school hill, as usual, waiting for Peter to come hurtling down the hill with all his mates, waiting to tag on behind the way I usually did, waiting for them all to peel off in different directions when they got to the market place, leaving Peter on his own. And then I’d catch up with him, and we’d bike off to the bottom of Westfield Road together.

But on this day, I saw all Peter’s mates go careering past, but Peter wasn’t with them. So I waited, knowing that he hadn’t gone, because I was always first out of the school gate so as to be sure and not to miss him. Eventually Peter appeared out of the hill’s sunlight, but instead of speeding he was sauntering, dawdling, hands on brakes, flashing his front wheel from side to side as an extra brake, and with him, riding one-handed, the other hand in her blazer pocket, her gold hair blending with the streaming sun, Susan, slightly flushed with that look that girls have when they agree to a boy accompanying them, and Peter, sullen, his face concentrated and tight, his eyes never moving from his swivelling handlebars.

There were calls from the stream of children on the pavement as they made their way to the bottom of the hill to the buses.

“Now we know you,” they shouted.

Now we know you. That meant, now we know who you like because being with them proves it. Peter ignored the calls but Susan reddened even more and now she held her handlebars with both hands.

As they drifted past me I put my feet to my pedals and slowly tagged along behind them.

At the halt sign I drew level.

“Going home, Pete?” I said.

“Where do you think?” he said.

I didn’t say anything to that.

We carried on through the market place and up the hill until we came to the corner of Westfield Road.

Peter slowed down and I wondered whether I ought to turn off or not but Susan kept on going, calling out bye to Peter so I stopped and we both positioned our bikes in their usual places by the curb.

Peter said, “Don’t think I’m going out with her because I’m not.”

“I didn’t think anything,” I said.

“Well, don’t. My mam and her mam have started getting friends, that’s all.”

I shrugged.

“Good looking though, isn’t she?” I said.

I could have bit my tongue off.

“Not bad.” Then he looked at me. “Why, do you want to go with her, then?”

I shook my head.

“Naw,” I said. “Don’t be daft.”

The thing was, though, that I loved her with all my heart. I’d loved her since I’d seen her walk into the classroom on the first day at school. But she’d never noticed me. Not once during the first year had we said anything to each other. Then at the end of the first year she’d gone up into the A stream with Peter. And A stream girls didn’t talk to B stream boys unless they were like Kerry and Patch.

“What’s daft about it?” Peter asked.

“Well, it just is.”

“Why is it?”

“It just is,” I said. “She wouldn’t go out with me, anyway.”

“Who says?”

“A streamers don’t go out with B streamers.”

“Don’t be daft. Tell you what, I’ll ask her for you.”

“No,” I said, panic-stricken. “No, don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

I’d rather never ask than have her say no. Besides, I’d never taken a girl out before. I’d be terrified. I wouldn’t know how to behave.

“I’m not bothered,” I said. “Honest. I just thought she wasn’t bad looking, that’s all.”

Peter gave me a crafty look but he didn’t say anything more about it.

“You won’t, will you?” I said. “I mean, ask her?”

Peter gave me the look again. Then he said, “Off to the pictures tonight?”

I nodded. And that was that.

Until the next day, waiting for Peter at the bottom of the hill. She was with him again. Which was what I’d been hoping for all day. As they sidled by I pedalled after them, this time not tagging along behind, but drawing level with them, Susan on the inside, then Peter, then me.

And this time, when we got to Westfield Road corner, Susan didn’t go on.

Peter said to her, “Riggy wasn’t half mad with Zena about her homework, wasn’t she?”

“She was worse than that time Rainbow put that shrew in Karen’s desk,” said Susan. “Do you remember?”

“God, aye. She sent him to the Boss,” said Peter.

“I remember that,” I said. “He got stick, didn’t he?”

“He nearly got expelled. Boss said it was cruel to the shrew,” said Peter.

“Well, it was really,” said Susan. “It was in the desk all night.”

Peter laughed.

“It was only a shrew,” he said.

“Shrews are nice,” said Susan.

“Nice,” said Peter, snorting.

The conversation dropped. I was trying hard to find something to say, something which would mean that Susan would have to say something in reply, directly to me. Eventually I said,