Enchantment (6 page)

Back in the flat, he opened a tin and ate a whole steamed pudding, cold, because he was too hungry to wait for it to heat up, and lay on the floor to digest it and examine his life.

Where are you going?

Last summer, they had done
Godspell
at the Boathouse Theatre. ‘Where are you going? Where are you going? Can you take me with you? For my hand is cold and needs warmth. Where are you going?'

He was good enough at his job to be department manager one day, but Mr D. would not retire for ten or fifteen years. The best Tim could hope for was that Lilian got pregnant, and Tim could spend six months or so in her place as assistant manager, with a larger plastic label to accommodate name and rank.

Why would Tim, the youngest, be chosen over Gail or Fred? Because Gail was a rebellious girl who threatened every week to drop out and pursue her real career in fashion design, and Fred was getting past it, to say the least. He knew his fabrics, and could add
up and multiply to make your head reel, without using a calculator, but his lips and teeth were slack, and over the backs of his hands, very evident in this line of work (Tim's were too small, but you could call them deft and artistic), crawled knotty veins and scaly patches.

‘Our boy is dangerously quiet this evening,' Brian said to Cindy. ‘I haven't heard the radio or the telly since he came in, and none of that condemned cell pacing.'

‘I hope he hasn't overdosed.' Cindy was stretched out in the most comfortable armchair, wiggling her large toes and liking the feel of her 10-denier tights. ‘I'm afraid he's rather lonely. Do you think we should invite him down here, or take him out for a meal?'

‘With you dressed like that?'

‘Why not? I pass, don't I – arms shaved and tits level?'

‘Now listen, Jack.' Brian was getting angry; his eyes narrowed and almost disappeared. ‘When we bought this house together, you swore you'd never take any chances outside. Enough's enough.'

‘For you, it is. What about me? Why can't I go public? Cross-dressing's not illegal.'

‘Unless someone spots you and complains. Then you're up for Conduct Leading to Breach of the Peace.'

‘I'm going out for a walk tonight.'

‘And get killed by the local rapist.'

Jack sighed. ‘It's always the woman that pays.'

‘You want a divorce?' They were off into their game. ‘I get the house, though, remember that. You can have the children.'

‘What would the children say?'

‘Ask them.'

‘We never had any.'

‘That's what's been wrong with our marriage from the start.'

‘And who's at fault?' Cindy sat up and pointed a finger with a carved jadeite ring on it.

‘You.'

‘You, Bri. My sperm count's as high as yours.'

Brian dismembered the wooden chair that came apart easily, and brandished a leg over his head.

‘Go ahead.' Cindy turned up her square-jawed face for the blow. ‘Open the curtains and let all those people out there in their cars see the spectacle of a battered wife.'

C.P. Games did not communicate again for long time, but another tiny postcard did turn up from H. V. Black Monk Trotman.

‘Oo knows indeed?' he wrote. ‘DeAth might look U up.'

‘Jack!' Brian called up the stairs. ‘Look out of the back window.'

Jack was in his room, changing out of his walking kit. He was sitting on the bed in a velvet housecoat, wondering whether it was worth bothering with the bra and suspender belt for what was left of Sunday evening.

‘Quick. There's a strange man going up the stairs to the flat.'

‘A
man?
' As Jack, he would have been more interested in a woman, but in his complex Cindy guise, he was supposed to be mad for men.

By standing at the side of his bedroom window, he could see the underside of Tim's outside staircase without being seen. Feet were treading up, large feet in swollen trainers that looked as if they had been blown up with a bicycle pump. Above them, wide brown corduroys and a pneumatic green jacket.

At the top, the platform cut the man off from Jack's view. Downstairs, Brian heard the bell, and saw Tim's door open, and the man step slowly inside.

Cindy came down in the long burgundy housecoat, her feet in feathered mules.

‘Tim's boy friend,' they told each other. It was no fun at all to guess that it was family, or a friend, or a man trying to sell insurance. ‘We saw Tim's boy friend.'

H. V. Trotman's name was Harold.

‘A fine royal name,' Tim said, in the mood of the medieval adventure games which were their common bond.

Surprisingly, Harold Trotman, such a craftily involved player in
Domain of the Undead
, did not want to talk about the games. He sat down at Tim's table, with his broad arms resting on the top and his hands turned down like paws, and waited for Tim to bring him a Coca-Cola. He looked like a beer drinker, but he wouldn't have a beer. Tim brought two cans, went back for mats, because he was fussy about his table top, went back for two packets of prawn-flavoured crisps, went back for salt and vinegar crisps because Harold didn't like prawn, went back for a saucer, which was all he had for an ashtray.

Harold smoked as if it were a career, taking long, careful drags, tapping the ash off with his forefinger, moving the cigarette about round the side of the saucer for best effect, picking it up purposefully for another intensive draw.

He did not look at Tim, so Tim was able to look at him. He had hair cut quite short over a large football of a head, growing low over his ears and forehead and quite far down the back of his neck, like fur. His face was blunt and stubbled. He had a long, weighty torso and short, thick limbs.

‘I hope you didn't mind me writing to you,' Tim said. ‘I wasn't trying to say you were cheating.'

Oh, that's all right.

Harold didn't say that, so Tim had to consider it said, in the pause.

‘It was just that your metamorphosis into the Monk – it was very, don't get me wrong, brilliant, in fact.'

Thank you.

‘But it was a bit of a dirty trick, you must admit, because it took away a lot of my points that I'd worked to build up over a long time.'

‘That right?' Harold said, as if Tim had not already discussed this in his letters, and at some length with Kevin, Games Master at C.P., who made the rulings.

‘Yes. I wish I knew where your next moves were going. But – er, but of course, if you told me, I'd counter them.'

Harold shrugged. ‘Don't keep on about all that stuff.'

He occupied himself with lighting another cigarette. Tim took a pull at his drink. But if they were not going to talk about the games, what could they talk about?

They sat in silence for a while. The only good thing about Harold smoking so much (his clothes and body reeked like a public bar) was that he did not keep reaching into the crisps, so Tim ate them all. Harold had come knocking on his door just as Tim's jaws were open wide to close on a giant sandwich of liver sausage and pickles and cheese, and he had to shove it into the refrigerator and wipe his slavering mouth with a tea towel.

‘My name is Harold Vincent Trotman,' H. V. suddenly began, and launched into his life story in a steady monotone, as if he were giving evidence.

That solved the conversation problem, but it was quite boring. Tim sat back with his feet on the bar of the table and listened and nodded and went, ‘Ah-ha' and ‘Mh-hm' when Harold said things like, ‘Sixty, seventy bricks at a time, you won't find a man to carry more, and where does it get me?'

He fixed his gaze on Tim. There was some red in the white of the eyes, and a bit of a bulge.

‘Superhod, the brickies call me. But will they put their money where their mouth is?'

‘Er-no?'

‘It's all part of the system, see. The way they got this country set up, you don't get a chance.'

The tale was ended. Should Tim tell his life story now? He opened his mouth, but Harold said, ‘Well, that's that,' and got up, slapping himself for cigarettes. ‘Got any?'

‘I don't smoke.'

‘Shan't be a sec, then.' Harold put on his puffy jacket again and went off, tripping and swearing on the loose step of the staircase.

He never came back. Tim waited ten minutes, and then dived for the sandwich and jammed it into his mouth, pickle juice running down his chin.

The next time Harold the hod carrier came, Tim was at work. Harold left one of his small cards under the door: ‘See U Sunday, then,' as if it had been arranged.

Tim was supposed to be going to his parents', but he made an excuse, because he did not want to miss Harold. A strange, rather disturbing man, but they had
Domain of the Undead
in common, even if Harold would not discuss it. Was it a friendship? Tim had only one or two people he might call friends. He hardly ever saw them.

Harold did not come until four o'clock, so Tim could have gone for lunch at 23 The Avenue, Rawley. Fed up, he was sitting on the window-sill where he sometimes played at being a sniper at night, when he saw a white car pull into the gateway and stop in front of Brian's garage. Harold eased his broad frame out of it with some difficulty, like taking off a tight shoe, and lumbered towards the outside staircase. Tim waited until he rang the bell, and then counted seven seconds before he opened the door, so as not to look as if he had been spying down on him.

Harold had brought his own brand of soda, a six-pack of something called Cheerio. He offered Tim a taste, but it was spiced and syrupy, like fizzy cough mixture. Tim put out the doughnuts he had bought with the Sunday paper, and made tea, but Harold would drink only his sickly soda.

He was quite friendly, but rather suspicious. He wanted to know where Tim worked, why he lived up here (‘like a chicken coop'), who lived downstairs, why Tim had written to him in the first place.

‘Why me? Why pick on me?'

‘I told you. I wanted to know more about the Black Monk. Players often write to each other.'