December (47 page)

      
'I think you better had,' Prof said soberly.

Moving from room to room in
the big yellow house, Shelley kept looking over her shoulder.

      
It occurred to her that she was looking for Tom.
      
And not, to her shame, because she
wanted to see him. It was the first time she'd been alone in this place and in
some perverse way she was relishing the freedom. It was the kind of freedom
which the mother of a dependent, handicapped child must feel when the child is
taken temporarily into a home to give the parents a break.

      
Vanessa bustled around, making coffee. There was no question of
needing relief from Vanessa. Shelley had never considered her to be
handicapped, merely different.

      
Tom was the handicapped child - getting worse, as Weasel had
noticed - and Shelley was breathing easier without him. It was an unnerving
sensation.

      
She was also surprised to find she was not worried about him.
He was, after all, a big strong man, an intelligent man, a man who was not mentally
ill in any clinical sense. And if he'd been in an accident, the police would
have known.

      
Martin had dealt with the police. Martin had driven her home,
and the police were waiting, taking measurements and photographs around the
demolished fence. The Tulleys' car had been removed, thank God, as had several
pieces of timber from the fence. When a senior officer had asked to speak to
the householder, Mr Storey, Martin had taken him on one side and Shelley had
watched him talking smoothly and casually, the policeman nodding.

      
'I, er, said that Mr Storey was away from home at present,' Martin
had explained afterwards. 'I'm afraid I implied - I hope you don't mind - a
certain marital discord.'

      
And Shelley had erupted into laughter; this was when the
terrifying sensation of freedom had first hit her, like a burst of wind in a
flaccid sail.

      
'Call me when you need anything,' Martin had said as he slid
into his white Jaguar. 'As soon as the police are finished, perhaps I could
send my gardener to reorganise your poor fence. And we'll speak again, of
course, about the Love-Storey displays.'

      
He was talking breezily, as if last evening had been a total,
unsullied success. Shelley liked that, was somehow warmed by it.

      
Outside, the sun shone with unseasonal energy. She heard a policeman
laugh lightly.

      
She was exhilarated and confused. It was as if, through their
appalling deaths, Angela and Wilfrid Tulley had in some way opened up her own
house to her - it was, after all, her house as much as Tom's fortress.

      
Shelley went to the kitchen stereo radio and tuned it, for the
first time, to Classic FM, sprinkling Vivaldi into the room, like moist flower
petals.

      
And then she began to cry, because this was all so very, very wrong.

      
Vanessa watched her solemnly.

Tom, very maudlin now, was
saying what a good man he had been really, how he'd always worked hard, done
his best for his family, could be harsh and forbidding, when he was sober, always
generous when drunk. Like the night he'd brought home the big red. cracked Gretsch
Chet Atkins
, changed his son's life for
good and all.

      
This was the old man, Tom's dad.
      
Bermondsey days. Tom's ma at the
biscuit factory, the old man down the docks.

      
'He didn't know nuffink about rock and roll,' Tom said. 'But
he sensed it was a way out the East End. Working down the docks'd made him restless,
the way it done wiv a lot of blokes shifting gear from foreign ports. But he
was trapped, my old man. Married to a good, steady breeder. My six older bruvvers
was already grown-up, one had a kid. Here he was, a bleeding grandad.'

      
'And you were the seventh son,' Meryl said huskily. 'It's true
then. It's really true.'

      
Tom laughed. He was still sprawled on the bed, and now Meryl
was kneeling on the floor at the bedside, the acolyte at the feet of the great
guru. This was ridiculous, and yet it wasn't.

      
Meryl had been introduced over the years to several spiritual
teachers who'd been neat, sleekly attired and quietly spoken. And self-deluded.
Or phoneys.

      
'Seventh son of a seventh son,' Tom said. 'What a load of old
cobblers, eh?'
      
'Is it?'

      
What was so convincing about Tom was his attitude towards the
psychic world. Resentment. Contempt, even. Something which he despised in
himself.

      
'Is it really cobblers, Tom?'

      
'I wish,' Tom said ruefully. 'The old man, he hated it so bad,
anyfink happened to him he'd go off and get pissed. Or he'd fight it off.'

      
'How would he do that?'

      
'Fight. Literally. He'd go and pick a bleeding fight. Anyfink
he seen he couldn't hit, he'd need to take it out on somefing he could hit.
Kind of reinforced his hold on reality. Wasn't hard to find a punch-up in
dockland, those days. My old man done five terms for GBH, maybe six. He didn't
come home nights. Ma never worried - he'd be safely banged up somewhere, poor,
mad git.'

      
'When he came home ...' Meryl said tremulously, 'from work,
from the docks, did he smell of oil? Engine oil?'
      
'No,' Tom said.

      
'Oh.' Meryl was deflated. Nothing about this was simple, was
it?

      
Tom said, 'When he came home from the garage was when he stank
of oil. My uncle, ma's bruvver, had this little garage, doing up old bangers,
motorbikes. The old man used to help him nights, when he was frew down the
docks. Then they'd go and get pissed.'

      
Meryl caught her breath.

      
'One night - I'd've been fourteen, fifteen at the time - these
geezers wander in suggesting a little extra business for the garage, respraying
nicked motors, changing plates, all this. Now, one fing about my dad, he was
honest, right? Yeah, yeah, he had his share of hookey gear, like anybody else,
else I'd never've got the Gretsch, would I? And yeah, he got pissed and he lost
his cool a lot. But crime with a capital C, no way, this was a straight garage.
So he slings these geezers out. I mean slings, adjustable spanner round the ear
job, you know?'
      
'Were you there, Tom?'

      
'Me? Nah. I was up my bedroom, as usual, pretending I was
Muddy Waters. I knew about it, though, later that night. I woke up, hurting.
Like toothache. Yeah. I knew about it.'

      
'About the men who came to the garage?'

      
'Nah. About the geezers waiting for him when he come out the
boozer. The geezers wiv the hooks. Docker's hooks? They ever have fights wiv
docker's hooks down at Gloucester quay? See, the hook, what you'd do is sharpen
the point. Flick knives? Knuckle dusters? They was toys, next to the docker's hook.'

      
Meryl shuddered.

      
'He come home,' Tom said. 'He made it home. I heard Ma
screaming. When I come downstairs he's standing in the kitchen door, swaying.
The man wiv two mouths.'

      
'Oh my God.'

      
Tom shrugged. 'You wanted to hear it, darlin', I'm telling it
you. The bastards'd laid his face open, shoved the hook in, thrust it up. Not
much blood. Surprisingly little blood.'

      
Closing her eyes to shut out the pain in Tom's face, Meryl saw
again the image of the man, like a brown column, swaying in her own kitchen
doorway. She smelled again the thick odour of engine oil, and another, metallic
smell, maybe blood. She felt nauseous.

      
'What'd happened,' Tom said, 'the hook'd gone up into his
brain. Poor bastard couldn't even speak. Staggered home like a zombie. And we
stood there, Ma and me, and we watched him collapse. Slowly. Like a tree.
Nuffink we could do.'

      
Meryl felt a pressure behind her eyes.

      
'And he died there,' Tom said. 'On the living-room floor. The
man wiv two mouths.'

      
'Thirty-odd years, Tom. Over thirty years and he's still ...?'

      
'He ain't far away, ever. Give him a disturbed atmosphere,
summink to latch on to, he's there, the poor old bleeder. See, lady, I... what
you called?'

      
'Meryl.'

      
'See, Meryl, I don't know the science of this. It could be me
what creates him, brings him into form. Like, the atmosphere, if it's
disturbed, it works on me and what materialises - frew me - is the worst fing I
ever saw. You know what I mean?'

      
'Yes,' she said. 'But he's more than that.'

      
Meryl, still kneeling on the motel carpet, looked at Tom, with
his lank yellow-grey hair and the misshapen moustache emerging from his face
like the stuffing from an old sofa. She saw a curiously heroic figure.

      
'He comes as a warning, Tom,' she said. 'He comes as a portent.'

      
'That's what you fink, is it?' Tom struggled up on his elbow,
leaned against the padded headboard.

      
Meryl didn't move. 'He manifested, surely, to show us what was
going to happen to Sir Wilfrid and Lady Tulley. Is that naive of me?'

      
'You know,' Tom said, 'the first time I seen him, I must've been
seventeen, and I done some serious praying.'
      
'To God?'

      
'I knelt down, 'side the bed, just like a bleeding
seven-year-old, and I prayed to the Big Geezer never to let me see the old man
again. Prayed wiv everyfink I'd got. And after that, it was only in dreams. He
come to me in dreams. Well, you can cope with that. You wake up, bit of a sweat
on, but that's all, no harm done. This was how it was, until ...'

      
'Until your wife died.' Meryl was alarmed. She didn't know
where this idea had come from. Martin had told her about Tom Storey's first wife,
how she'd died, that was all.

      
Tom said, 'You're a witch, lady. You know that?'

      
'Nothing so exotic,' Meryl said, uncomfortable. One of her
shoes had come off; her toes curled on the carpet. Her face was growing hot.

      
'We was doing an album,' Tom said. 'Four of us, all wiv the
same problem, seeing more'n we oughter see, knowing more than was good for us.
But not understanding any of it.'

      
Meryl found her eyes drawn to his pathetic blue tattoo. What a
strange, sad life he'd had.

      
'The others was kids. That age, you got no responsibility. It
excites you a bit. It scares you sick, but when you're young you like being scared.
On account of you fink one day you're gonna understand.'

      
'I know about the album, Tom. Stephen Case ...'

      
'That ponce.'

      
'I didn't like him either. Tom, I need to ask you something.
The vision? Those people lying dead at the dining table?'

      
Tom was watching her now, his eyes half-closed. 'I'm sorry. What
I said earlier. I insulted you. I didn't mean to. I mean, I did mean to, but ...
anyway, I'm sorry. You're quite a sexy lady. When I seen you last night, all
made up, the black clobber, I fought, you know, strewth.'

      
'I dress like that for my employer,' Meryl said primly. 'Tom,
the vision. It wasn't only the Tulleys. It was Case. And your wife. And Martin.
Dead. All dead.'
      
'Yeah.'

      
'Doesn't that scare you? After what happened to the Tulleys?'

      
'That was coincidence, the Tulleys. Nah. It don't scare me. Nuffink
scares me no more. I seen it all before. The blood at the table, this is Aelwyn
wosname, and the massacre. Picked it up at the Abbey, like a dog turd on your
shoe. All illusion. Half of what you see, it's illusion. You learn that."
      
'How can you talk of coincidence?'

      
'I'm tired,' Tom said. 'I'm knackered. Shagged out. I can't go
home. I can't go back there again.'
      
'What about Shelley?'

      
'Shelley's got it together. Shelley don't need me '
      
'And the little girl?'

      
'I don't know. I need to sleep. You gonna stay wiv me, while I
get to sleep? Please?'