Nomance (5 page)

That’s when the answer
hit him!

She’s been raped!

At that, a great weight
was lifted from his mind. The last thing a rapist would do was move
in with his victim. Gwynne heaved a hearty sigh of relief and
slouched back in his chair with a rare smile.

Charmaine, the office
trainee, who had walked into the canteen just a moment before,
smiled back. Then, without warning, like she had acted before she
could think about it, she sat opposite him and said, ‘You ought to
crack your face more often, mate, you’d be less ugly.’

And Gwynne picked it up
from there.

Over the days to come,
this harshness of tone would lessen until they spoke to each other
without any particular inflection whatsoever.

Yes, Gwynne was on the
way to true love. It made him feel sort of protective and warm.
Chivalrous even. In which case he had to ask himself what would
Charmaine say if ever she found out his sister had got raped and he
hadn’t done anything about it? No doubt she would demand to know
whether he didn’t have any balls or something. After all, wasn’t
Carla getting raped as near as damn it a personal insult to him as
well?

God damn it, Charmaine
was right! He couldn’t take that sort of shit off another guy. He
had to do something. Him and his mates had to go out there and
round the fucker up. Then they’d teach the bastard to think twice
before he raped his sister again.

But to round anyone up,
even a fucker, one needs a description. Well, that should be easy
to get hold of – or so he thought. But whenever he got back home
and found himself face to face with Carla, his usual masterful way
with words deserted him. He couldn’t understand it. The question
couldn’t be simpler, could it?

You know that guy who
raped you? What did he look like?

And yet he found
himself hesitating in a way he had never hesitated before. The
problem was him and Carla had never talked about anything for
years, apart from stuff like housekeeping and taking deliveries of
bog peat. And conversations like that did not lead straight up her
skirt the way rape did.

The more he
prevaricated, the more difficult it seemed to get.

However, they were
watching television in the lounge one evening and Gwynne was
telling himself that he was never going to be able to get the words
out, when he heard this voice say, ‘Carla, you know you’re pregnant
and all that?’

Gwynne couldn’t believe
his luck. It was
his
voice. He’d blurted the question out
without having to think. Once again he had to tell himself that in
life you never think too little. He didn’t let himself think now as
Carla fixed him with a stony stare. ‘What did he look like then,
the man?’

‘Never set eyes on
him.’

‘What? Bastard! What
did he do? Use drugs?’

‘Yes, a sedative and
local anaesthetic.’

‘Jesus Christ. If I
catch the fucker . . . ’

‘Aw, relax will you.
It’s all over and done with now.’ Carla turned back to the TV.

Gwynne found himself
mulling over his sister’s reluctance to discuss the situation.
Something told him, maybe a film he had seen once, that there were
some women who preferred to try and forget rather than exact
revenge. It was a baffling reaction and he could scarcely credit
Carla with not wanting to break the swine’s neck.

But hey! Perhaps – just
perhaps – she didn’t think her little brother was up to the job of
breaking a swine’s neck. Maybe she already thought he had no balls
or something.

And worse still, it
looked like she wasn’t going to give him the chance to prove
otherwise.

Well, God damn . .
.

Slowly but surely,
Gwynne’s simmering resentment against the man who had raped his
sister turned instead to a simmering resentment against his
sister.

He was back to his
normal self.

In actual fact, before
the next two weeks were up, Gwynne was better than ever. His
friendship with Charmaine developed into a new relationship, and
with a new relationship came a new social circle. He was soon too
busy to fret one way or another about his sister getting raped.
There were other problems to sort out. Like this Friday, when
everyone in his new circle had the afternoon off from work because
they’d planned for a night of clubbing in South London. They were
in the pub, trying to kill the afternoon, and Jake (Charmaine’s
ex), was waving these tablets around and Gwynne was struck by how
these tablets looked like the tablets he had seen Carla taking in
the kitchen.

Being reminded in this
way of his home life Gwynne conceived of a better way to kill the
afternoon, and he exclaimed, ‘Lets go back to mine, chill and get
something to eat.’

Everyone agreed
straight away, and they headed for Jake’s wheels.

At some point during
the journey West, Gwynne gave Jake a long penetrating look.

He saw that Jake’s most
constant companion was a broad, chimpanzoid grin. It sort of
worried Gwynne. Jake was such a joker. Might he, by any chance,
drop one of those pills in amongst his sister’s while no one was
looking?

Wasn’t that exactly the
sort of monkeying around he would do, just for a laugh?

Nar. Jake was sound! He
wouldn’t even be tempted to play a dirty trick like that, even
though he’d already exclaimed at the top of his voice in the pub
that the pills looked the same as his sister’s and that the bottle
was on the window sil in the kitchen. Jake was bigger than
that.

Hadn’t he even said
that he was glad it was Gwynne who’d nicked Charmaine off him, and
not some other bastard instead?

Seven
:
Spac Attack!

Before Gwynne and the
crew arrived, Carla was busy serving in
Romance
.

Mrs Shelly Hedley had
just stepped into the shop and Carla’s heart missed a beat. Shelly
hadn’t been around for months and, as her No. 1 customer most
likely to die, Carla had grown pessimistic and assumed
Romance
had missed out on her funeral. Oh, how cruel! Shelly
gave many indications of having a wealthy husband and Carla felt
confident he would be able to afford to put the cemetery knee-deep
in flowers on the big day.

On the other hand, as
desirable as Shelly’s death was financially, Shelly was still one
of the few customers Carla had a sneaking admiration for.

Why?

Because Shelly had a
smoldering black core of evil, encrusted by a thick, silky
saccharine coating – like she was the child Satan had begot upon
the Sugar Plum Fairy.

That’s why.

And hence Carla’s
delight on seeing her again.

‘Good afternoon!’

‘Good afternoon, dear,’
Shelly’s thin, cut-glass accent sliced through the lush air of
Romance and Carla shivered with anticipation. ‘I’d like to order –
’ She was abruptly silent. Her eyes – as clear and colourless as
ice – had alighted upon Carla’s stomach. Her fixed stare gave was
akin to that of a monestrous, ancient and dilapidated owl about to
swoop for the very last time. Carla felt the child kick within her,
as if in trepidation. ‘Well, I say!’ Shelly trilled with joy.
‘When’s the happy day?’

Carla really didn’t
like to think about that, let alone discuss it. However, she had to
consider all those deluxe wreaths just over the horizon, not to
mention Shelly’s regular order of dahlias, tulips and daffs.

There was no way round
it, Carla must give an answer that pleased.

‘When’s the happy day?’
She mused aloud.

Oh, but she so wanted
to tell her! Carla would willingly tell Shelly anything she wanted
to hear, if that’s what it took to win the funeral for Romance. And
for that reason wasn’t it brill that she could provide an answer
based upon Gerald "The Inseminator" Lytton’s expert opinion?

‘Three weeks, two days,
four hours,’ she laughed girlishly, ‘and counting.’

Shelly greeted this
frippery with a hollow gibber and remarked, ‘If only doctors could
be so accurate. I myself don’t rate them above weather forecasters.
And of course, the daughter of a friend of mine relied on her
doctor’s prediction and took it for granted that she wouldn’t be
inconvenienced during her honeymoon in Sri Lanka. But of course she
ended up giving birth on the aeroplane. And so there you are, she
joined the mile-high club the day after her wedding.’

It was on the tip of
Carla’s tongue to correct Shelly about the meaning of the
Mile-High Club
. But something told her that any reference to
sex would only send Shelly into howling shrieks of laughter.

But there was no time
for laughter anymore, was there? The proper subject of conversation
was now age, death, decay and funerals.

‘How about you, Shelly?
Do you clock up many air miles?’

‘No darling, I like to
keep both feet on the ground these days.’

‘But a lot of people –
I mean retired people – travel more than ever,’ Carla said
artlessly, thinking of Rupert Node’s remark that exotic holidays
and long-haul flights did his undertaking business a world of good.
She giggled. ‘It’s called skiing.’

‘Darling, these days
standing’s hard enough.’

‘No, no, ski. S. K. I.
It stands for
spending the kids’ inheritance
. See?’

‘I don’t have to travel
to do that, dear,’ Shelly smiled.

‘That’s good,’ Carla
said, trusting this meant Shelly would SKI on her funeral.

‘Of course, I loved to
ski when I was younger,’ Shelly reminisced, ‘only then, of course,
I was fighting fit.’

‘But you still are,’
Carla tinselled.

Shelly fixed her with a
reptilian stare. ‘Not since I carried my two boys I’m not. I don’t
know about you, but pregnancy played merry hell with my spine.’

‘I do get a slight
twinge now and then.’

‘Oh dear.’

Carla gave her a
dimpled smile. ‘But I don’t complain. I always think how lucky I
am. I mean,’ she gushed, ‘it’s not like any little fall might crack
my hip or anything. I’m always awed by the very, very old people.
They are the real heroes, aren’t they? Those who risk six months in
hospital just for the right to stand on their own two feet.’

Shelly scraped the air
with joyless laughter. ‘But then, dear, they’ve always had to. My
generation, you see, never got benefits off the state. Life was
tough for women back then. On the other hand, though, if you did
get pregnant there was at least a fifty-fifty chance your husband
would stick around . . . and then, maternity leave was unknown. How
about you, darling, are you going on maternity leave?’

‘Oh no, Shelly, dear,’
Carla cooed, ‘I have to support myself in my hour of need. As you
can see, I run the business on my own and I can’t afford
not
to work. I expect I’ll still be at it even when
I’m
very,
very old.’ She gave Shelly a meaningful look. ‘Not that I ever want
to retire. No, not me. If you don’t work then what else is there to
do, apart from sit round all day drinking coffee and eating thin
little biscuits? If ever I ended up like that I’d probably want to
top myself. But of course, only after I had arranged the very best
send-off I could afford.’

‘But it is terribly
hard for single parents to hold a job down, isn’t it?’ Shelly cooed
back. ‘I’m not saying
you’ll
have to quit work, but many do,
don’t they? And that’s such a shame, I think. Especially if they
feel really worthless about themselves and end up,‘ she smiled at
the quaintness of Carla’s term, ‘
topping
themselves.’ She
paused here and they both observed 0.2 of a minute’s silence in
remembrance of the topped. ‘But never mind,’ Shelly continued
breezily, ‘it’s not all bad nowadays. The Government has, at long
last, started to force the men pay up, haven’t they? So I reckon –
even if the worse came to the worse – you’d be able to afford a
pretty good send-off.’

‘I only wish the
Government could force my man to pay up,’ Carla said, recalling
that, like every one of her other customers, Shelly had never
stooped to find out whether she had a partner or not. Well, it was
time for a little white lie – just in case Shelly got away with the
idea she was a loose woman. That might be bad for business. ‘But
they won’t get a penny out of him, because you see, my husband’s
dead. Yes, and he was a great big strapping erector too. You know,
he put those . . . rods up. Never had a day’s illness in his life.
Fit as a fiddle, he was – right up to the second he hit the
concrete.’

‘I’m . . . terribly
sorry to hear that,’ Shelly said, looking amazed.

‘Oh, I’m tougher than I
look,’ Carla reassured her, ‘and anyway, I see it all the time in
my line of business.’

Shelly was momentarily
confounded. ‘Why? Are you a . . . erector too?’ Her eyes roamed
over Carla’s meaty shoulders. ‘In your spare time?’

‘No, just a humble
florist. What I mean to say is, I do a lot of funerals.’

‘Ah.’

‘It goes without saying
that I really went to town when they buried my husband. People came
from all over to see my displays. I very much doubt whether there
will be a funeral like it for a good few years to come. Not,
anyhow, till I bury Gwynne, my brother. I’ll do something special
for him. Though I always hope someone else might come along first,
someone who can afford to stand out from the crowd. Someone with
the vision thing. That’s where
Romance
can offer you more.
See, with us, you can order in advance and die feeling completely
confident about the future.’

Shelly nodded
throughout this speech, while her hands, acting, as it seemed, of
their own accord, brought out a carton of fancy cigarettes from her
handbag, a handbag which no doubt cost more than what Carla earned
in a month – a year even. ‘Oh, what am I doing?’ She upbraided
herself, and put the carton back.