Mountains of the Moon (23 page)

“For God’s sake!” She keeps leaving the bottom chip behind. “If you want to pay a customer seventeen chips, for example,” she says, “you hold the stack like a pencil and wipe three chips off the bottom. See–twenty, minus the three, means the remainder has to be seventeen chips. Clever, isn’t it?”

When she goes to the toilet I try it myself.

“How many people are there in the training group?” I calls.

“Six,” she says. “So what did the lady of leisure do today?”

Can hear her hopping and hanging her suit.

“Panda, don’t!”

The dog brings me one of Gwen’s slippers.

“What’s for supper?” she says. “I’m starving.”

“Bacon. Sausages. Egg,” I says. “Fried Bread. Beans. Tomatoes. Hash browns. A bottle of wine. The trifle is for me.”

“You are joking?” she says.

“I’ve had a bit of a charmer,” I says.

“What do you mean? Charmer. Where have you been? A charmer in Weston-super-Mare, surely not?”

“I went to sign on, which wasn’t charming. Arst at the fish and chip shop on the corner in front of the pier, about the job in the winder. They said try Friday. Then I went out long the pier. The musement arcade at the end was deserted. Done fifty pence on the Sliding Penny machine, played for hours. Sat out on a bench and watched the seagulls flying til it started to—”

“Get on with it, get to the charming bit!”

“The white horse,” I says. “Outsider, 11 to 1.”

“You may as well be speaking Russian,” Gwen says.

“The Six Horse Race machine. The white horse won, then it won, then it won. Winks as good as a nod, the mechanism was jammed. Every race ten pence was making one pound ten, times the six players, you can see what a charmer it was.”

“But I don’t understand! What does it mean?”

“Five hundred and ninety-seven pounds, in ten-pence pieces, that’s what it means.”

“Charming!” She rubs her hands and jigs her feets. “Then what happened, did the white horse pack up altogether, fucking collapse?”

“No, I fucking did, when the pier closed at three o’clock.”

“You weren’t joking then, about supper?”

“Well, you got the casino job, and I got lucky.”

“Bring it all on then,” she says. “Start with the wine.”

I test her all evening on the thirty-five times table then she has to go to bed. I wash up, multiplying odds. Nod off in my coat on the sofa. Wakes up, gain, at three in the morning, sits up and smokes a cigarette, looks at the red training chips. I get down on my knees. Claws my hand over the stack, feels my fingertips on the carpet and where sactly twenty is, where the top edge digs into my palm. Index finger finds the bottom five, cuts the stack down. Piles it up. Left hand. Right hand. Left hand. Right hand is lazy and weak. I close my eyes, cut them down and stack them up.

Right hand.

Right hand.

I hear birds singing, then Gwen’s larm and her getting up and ready. I make us coffee, she drinks it and goes. Can hear the car won’t start, damp under the distributor cap. I go out and get it going for her and wave as she drives way. She’s left the training chips behind. Warms up my left hand, then the right, cuts them down, piles them up. I prove twenty chips to the inspector, to the punter, to the camera. Wipes three chips off the bottom of the stack.

“Paying red: 17.” I says it loudly and clearly so the microphone can hear it.

“
Ha rung, rung rung?
” the dog says.

I take the wheelbarrow, the dog sits in it and we roll down the prom and onto the beach, follow the curve of the shore and under the pilings of the pier. While the dog runs chasing the wind and seagulls, I dig up the ton of ten-pence pieces that I buried here yesterday. Then we go back to the chalet to wash them and count them. Last I leave the dog in the chalet and go to the bank. Has to back the wheelbarrow all the way up the steps of Barclays.

What did the lady of leisure do this week? Pick up dog shit in the hall. Learn the seventeen, eleven and eight times tables, the sequence of numbers around the wheel, clockwise from the green zero. We know the red numbers and the black and that some punters bet on certain segments of the wheel, called Orphans and Neighbors and Tier.

I’ve just been to the fish and chip shop by the pier, had a demonstration on battering cod, got some white wellies and a stupid hat. Start on Tuesday lunchtime. Always comes down to the same old thing, I has to be somewhere. I walk back long the beach, diamond and shantung lining flashing in the wind. Unlocking the chalet door I can hear the telephone ringing. Surprises me it’s still connected. I magine that the fish and chip shop want to make a change of plan; I get to it in time.

“Hello?”

“Is that Kim?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ah,” a girl says. “I really loved your coat and hat. I’d like to do millinery, my grandmother was a milliner.”

It’s Princess Grace from the casino. I bite my lip; wonders if Gwen is sick, had an accident or something.

“What I phoned to say is that someone has dropped out of the training this morning and you were next on the list. Darren wondered if you would like to take their place and come in on Monday morning?”

“Yes,” I says, “I would.”

When I get off the phone I sit on the sofa. Feels something start to spin. Sure thing. Sure thing, like I’m pinned to a mighty wheel. Feels sick and terrible scared.

Gwen rams the car into the muck heap. It’s three in the morning. I knew that the training group was going for a Friday drink, but she’s rolling, drove back the fifteen miles from Bristol legless.

“I’ve been promoted.” She lurches in the hall. “They’ve decided I’m wasted, hic, on the tables, so now they’re training me for reception, that’s good, isn’t it? I’m to be the, hic, face of the organization.” She crashes through her plastic folding door. “Come in, come on, Chrissy Wissy,” she says.

Bloke has been standing in the shadow. Gwen hauls him into her bedroom and the door crashes closed, fore he can say anything. I think about the training, it worries me, the maths. Six weeks’ training, nine to five, is going to kill me; I work that out quick as a fucking flash.

“It’s nice and bright and cheery, Catherine,” Mr. Nesbitt says.

“Somewhere over the rainbow,” I says.

A yellow path is painted on the floor and Mr. Nesbitt looks like a munchkin.

“Is this your dad, Catherine? Is this your dad. Is this your dad?” Toby arsts.

We follow the yellow brick road past the pool tables and the table-tennis tables and the dinner tables. Liam jumps in front of me, waggles his tongue through a V in his fingers. Wanker, I bounce my hand.

“How many boys are there?” Mr. Nesbitt ducks a chair, lucky cos it nearly got him.

“Twenty-six,” I says. “The big boys is in the annex.”

“How many girls?”

“Just me. Alison came but she went to court and never come back.”

“That’s a shame,” Mr. Nesbitt says. “Did you like her?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

Becos, becos, becos, becos, becos.

“She set fire to my dictionary.”

Husband at the hospital let me keep it.

“I can get you another one,” Mr. Nesbitt says. “Is it ruined?”

“It int ruined, just half of it burned.”

“Sorry.” He shakes his head.

I look at his sorry face.

“It don’t matter, Mr. Nesbitt,” I says. “I had too many words, anyway.”

“Is this your dad? Are you her dad? Are you? Is he, Catherine? Is he?”

Housemaster Jim calls Toby way, cos he int allowed bothering us.

We has to sit in a side visitors’ room with the door open so staffs can see if Mr. Nesbitt gives me a gun, case I shoot them all. In real life he’s brung a word puzzle book and pine tree bubble bath. I take the top off the bottle and smell the forest.

“Thank you, Mr. Nesbitt,” I says, “smells better than cabbige.”

I does a dab on my wrists and behind my ears. He folds his hands on the table and I sees the bandage has gone. He’s got a scab. He’s got a wedding ring.

“How is your wife Mr. Nesbitt?” I arsts.

“Still upset.”

“Sorry,” I says.

My finger follows the swirly stitches on the white tablecloth; yesterday I got a red one from in the…Fire larm starts ringing. Don’t know if it’s
real or not. It int real it’s just Liam, breaking glass gain. The larm is like a Chinese torture. Housemaster Paul gets a good idea and lets it ring for a punishment. When our ears start to bleed he gets up and goes to turn it off. Everybody claps. Then everybody is quiet cos the noise is loverly when it stops.

“Sorry, Mr. Nesbitt.” I make my hands open and close on the table like a butterfly.

Red Roofs Detention Center

Dingles Farm

Dingles Lane

Egham

Surrey

I press the button for the lamp to come on but it don’t work. The moon is big as another planet. Sideways out the peephole in the door, can see the oringe light and hear night staffs talking soft. Can’t tell who it is. I sit down on the end of my bed. It int the moon. It’s the round white light on the corridor wall, shining through the peephole and onto the winder.

Nothing is real.

While I’m waiting I sit down on the floor with my back gainst the radiator. Then I kneel up and warm my front, then does my bum, then sit down on the floor and put my feets up on it, I wishes I could get inside it. I undoes the bolt with my fingers and let hot water dribble on my wrists. Mop up what I spilled with my socks. Someone has stuck a poster on the wall over my bed. White horse, rearing up in the sea, looks scared case it gets drownded. I hear the squeak of shoes and a face comes up in the peephole, Housemistress Joyce doing the twelve clock checks. She don’t say nothing, always looks at me like I was a bad bitter taste. When she’s gone I get on my knees and feel underneath the drawers. It’s where I hid the red tablecloth. I get undressed and wrap it around loose and tie a knot on one shoulder. I get up and the floor starts running. I keep
running til I start to breathe. I run past pain til my heart gets up. I run toward the morning shining yellow in my mind. Every day I get more tuned.

We drive around to look for the house. Find the rolling park easy enough, with all the streets like spokes coming off it. Park Lane, not as grand as it sounds, no trees, parked cars both sides, couple of motorbikes, gardens big enough for parking bins. It’s a short street, leads from a mini-roundabout to the rusted ornate gate of the park.

“There,” I says. “Green door. Number 3.”

We sit in the car outside and wait for the letting agent. One thing’s for sure, we can’t stay in Weston-super-Mare.

“Here he is!” the dog says.