Orkney Twilight (7 page)

Around the common, past Mrs Dee’s Chinese restaurant where the best spare ribs in south London were to be found, according to Jim, heading for the river. She peered through the iron girders of Battersea Bridge as they crossed the grey smear of the Thames at low tide. The bullhorn handles of a BMX bike poked upwards from the kippled beach of broken glass and plastic pebbles. A solitary figure patrolled the shoreline, waving his metal detector optimistically. The black arrow of a cormorant shot out from under an arch, flying downstream towards St Paul’s and the ominous cumulonimbus tower building in the east.

‘Which is your favourite bridge?’ she asked.

Jim paused to consider. ‘Vauxhall. I like Vauxhall best.’

Jim often backed the underdog. Unless there was any danger it might bite his ankle, and then he kicked it.

‘What’s so great about Vauxhall?’

‘It has a particular atmosphere, Vauxhall.’

He jerked his head over his shoulder. ‘I reckon Vauxhall has always been a bit of a hot spot, a crossing point. It’s where the Effra and the Tyburn dump out into the Thames. Places where rivers meet are always… sacred. Gateways to the other side.’ He glanced wistfully over his shoulder at the south bank.

On the north side, the Cortina edged along the polluted streets of Chelsea. She checked the car behind: still the Volvo. The road bent slightly to the left and now the cars behind the Volvo came into view: a navy Renault, a red Peugeot and behind the Peugeot, a black Rover. She peered into the wing mirror but the car was at the wrong angle to make out the numberplate. She glanced at Jim. He was staring straight ahead, keeping his eye on the road now, muttering about the smear of squashed insects on the windscreen. They swung right at a set of traffic lights. The Volvo peeled off to the left. The Peugeot turned right behind them. So did the Rover.

‘Is that car following us?’ she asked,

‘Which car?’

‘The one behind the Peugeot. The black Rover.’

He didn’t check the mirror. ‘Nope,’ he said.

Had he clocked it already? Dismissed it? Anyway. Black Rover. There had to be more than one of those in the world.

She faced forwards again, beginning to feel relieved that they had almost made it to the station without engaging in a slanging match.

‘So what about this friend of yours, then?’ Jim demanded. ‘The one that’s tagging along.’

‘Tom?’

‘Yes. Him. What does he do?’

‘He’s just finished his A-levels; like me.’

‘Then he’s going to university in September.’

‘No. He’s taking a year out.’

‘A year out? So he’s taking it easy in between farting around at school and doing bugger all at college.’

Jim slowed down for an amber light.

‘No, he’s looking for work experience that might help him with his career.’

‘What career is that then?’

‘He wants to be a journalist.’

Jim slammed his foot on the accelerator, sped across the junction as the light turned red.

‘What did you do that for? You could have killed us.’

Jim ignored her. ‘So he’s a journalist,’ he said. ‘A bloody gongfermor. A night-time trawler of cesspits.’

‘I said he
wants
to be a journalist,’ she replied, backtracking from what, she surmised from his reaction, was not the best career choice for someone he was about to share a holiday cottage with.

‘Wants to be – is. Same thing, isn’t it?’

‘No. It’s like me saying I want to be a barrister.’

‘You don’t want to be a bloody barrister, do you?’

‘I was just trying to illustrate the difference between having an aspiration to be a journalist and actually being a journalist,’ she said, with exaggerated patience. ‘Anyway, what’s wrong with being a barrister?’

‘Barristers. Bunch of crooks. Masters of pettifoggery.’

‘I thought they were on the same side as you.’

Jim puffed out his cheeks and shook his head at the naïveté of his daughter.

‘Are there any careers you do approve of?’

He sucked his teeth. ‘I’ll think about that one.’

‘Thanks. Might be useful to know.’

She stared out of the window. Why on earth was she asking a secret policeman for careers advice?

They crawled past the Kensington Olympia exhibition centre. The Mind, Body and Soul experience.

‘You won’t say anything to your mate about…’ Jim said.

‘No, I won’t say anything.’ How the bloody hell did he think they were going to manage a week crammed into a holiday cottage together without anyone talking about what Jim did for a living? She took a deep breath. There was a whiff of hot-weather bad drains in the air.

‘Journalist on the make. Now that is bad news,’ Jim said. ‘You’d better check what he’s got in his pockets when we leave.’

She muttered ‘piss off’ under her breath.

Stuttering down the slip road to the station, she peered in the rear-view mirror and spotted the Rover gliding smoothly past like a shark. Maybe she was just being paranoid after all. They parked.

‘Get your bag out the boot,’ said Jim. He handed her the car keys, started fiddling with something under the driver’s seat.

She hauled herself out of the Cortina, walked around to the back, opened the boot. He had dumped his haversack on top of her bag. She leaned over, reached in, knocked her knuckle against a hard object in the front of his haversack, retracted her hand. Froze. Eyes locked. Half an inch of rag-wrapped dull black metal sticking out from the loosely buckled pocket. Not much. But enough. Pistol. She didn’t have to look twice; she’d seen it before. Once. Years ago. She had wandered into her parents’ bedroom for no real reason, drawn towards Jim’s unlocked cabinet – curious – she’d never seen it unlocked before, and opened a drawer. It had been lying among the rubber bands and envelopes. She had peered over and read the word ‘WALTHER’ engraved on its side. It looked like a toy, so small and neat with its funny name. Walther. She reached out to touch. And just then Jim had shouted up from the bottom of the stairs. What the fuck was she doing? She knew she wasn’t allowed in their room. She had better move her arse out of there pretty bloody quickly. She had legged it, more scared by the threat of a bollocking from Jim than by the danger of a gun. The very next day she had been watching the six o’clock news with her sisters and there was a story about the lead singer of this American pop group. Chicago. Accidentally killed himself with his own shotgun. Don’t worry. It’s not loaded. So he had said just before he pulled the trigger, according to the newsreader. She had burst into tears and Helen had whacked the back of her head, told her not to be such a big cry-baby, blubbing about nothing. She felt like crying now, although she knew she wouldn’t, knew that she could fight down the prickling tears of anger. What was he doing taking a pistol with him? In his haversack. On a journey with her. And one of her mates. Christ, what kind of a trip were they on?

The noise of Jim moving around in the front of the Cortina snapped her back to her senses. She carefully, very carefully, lifted the haversack to one side. Removed her bag. Closed the lid of the boot. Locked it. Double-checked that she had locked it. Jim was standing by the car, scrutinizing the train’s trailer waiting for its load.

‘Motorail,’ he said, talking to the air, ‘I reckon it’s the only way we’ll get from one end of the country to the other at the moment without having our number-plate checked and being stopped on suspicion of travelling to join the picket lines.’

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and had a fleeting image of madness; they were outlaws on the run, fleeing north, dodging police surveillance, road blocks, pulling a crafty getaway move by travelling middle-class Motorail. With a lethal weapon. A Walther. Heading to Orkney for a shoot-out in a holiday cottage. Please leave this cottage as you found it and make sure all dead bodies are disposed of in the rubbish bags provided. But that was nuttiness. Even on Jim’s sliding scale of undercover cop simmering insanity that had to be crazy. Surely.

‘Oh the miners’ strike,’ she said. Her comment didn’t sound quite as casual as she had intended it to be.

Jim raised an eyebrow darkly. ‘It’s a bloody war zone out there. Chaos.’

He flicked his wrist to check the time, the watch face on the inner side of his left wrist. She had copied his habit, wore her watch on the inside of her wrist too. Just like Jim. He’d learned that one in the army he had once told her, easier for quick time checking when you’re driving. Or using a gun.

‘There are a couple of things I need to sort out with the guards,’ he said.

‘Right. See you in a bit then.’

She handed him back his car keys. He headed off towards a huddle of men in blue uniforms, leaving her standing alone by the car. She glared at the Cortina’s boot, pictured the Walther, swaddled in its white cloth, nestling in its pocket on the front of Jim’s haversack. She shook her head disbelievingly, turned and walked away.

The platform was humming. Passengers were milling around, climbing on board the train, jumping off again, sticking their heads out of the small gap at the top of the carriage windows, shouting at each other to go and fetch that bag from the car before the guards drove it on to the trailer. She checked the slip road. Perhaps Tom had got cold feet. Perhaps she was better off without a travelling companion anyway. After Becky she had drawn a blank, decided she would tell Liz, definitively, that she couldn’t find a friend to accompany her and she certainly was not going with Jim alone. And then Tom had phoned. Tom Spiller; only son of a doctor and a Marxist sociology lecturer at Manchester University. She had met Tom through Becky and Becky had met Tom when he came down from Manchester for a march in London. Becky fancied Tom, invited him down to stay, but it came to nothing because, it turned out, he had a steady girlfriend in Manchester. Let’s be friends, he had said and that was the end of it as far as Becky was concerned. It was Sam who stayed in touch with Tom long after Becky’s sights had shifted elsewhere. Sam didn’t care about the girlfriend. In fact she preferred it that way. She didn’t fancy Tom. He wasn’t her type. He was too porky and ginger. Although he was tall. And he was a laugh. They had fun together. Which was why she liked him.

He had phoned to find out what she was doing over the summer. His girlfriend had flown to California for a few months to earn some money as an au pair and he was loafing around Manchester looking for an attachment or an internship or a job on a local paper, but he hadn’t managed to find anything yet. She hadn’t realized before then that he wanted to be a journalist; maybe he had told her and she hadn’t really taken any notice. She still wasn’t taking much notice when she asked him whether he’d like to come to Orkney with her to keep an eye on Jim. He had said yes instantly, pleased with the offer of a free holiday and the chance to meet Jim because Tom had always been curious about her dad.

‘The thing that’s interesting about you,’ he had said one evening when she was thrashing him at backgammon, ‘is that everyone else I know has grown up with liberal parents, but your dad is an authoritarian.’ It had rankled, his observation that what was interesting about her was Jim, but she had let it drop.

‘It would be more accurate to describe him as an authoritarian liberal,’ she had replied.

‘How does that work then?’

‘He has liberal views about the world. But if anyone disagrees with him, he tells them to fuck off.’

At least Tom knew the score then, when he said yes.

As soon as she had put the phone down she suspected she had made a mistake; she felt breathless, panicked. Tom, she reminded herself too late, asked too many questions, he didn’t leave you alone, he didn’t let up, she would have to spend the whole week fending him off, losing him. She wanted a sidekick, a supporter, not an inquisitor. She phoned him back to say Jim had cancelled the trip, but he was already out for the evening and the next day she was out with Becky and didn’t have time to call. After that it was Thursday. Departure day. And as she stood waiting on the platform she reassured herself with the thought that he might ask lots of searching questions, but he never took much notice of the answers because he was always more interested in forwarding his own theories than listening to anything anybody else had to say. Anyway he lived at the other end of the country, so if it all went wrong she would never have to see him again.

And there he was now, loping self-consciously towards her. Scuffed Adidas trainers, black Peter Storm windcheater, duffle bag slung over sloping shoulder, one hand in pocket. He didn’t look like someone who might have hidden ambitions. Although he did look different from the last time they had met up. He seemed taller, sharper, clothes hanging not clinging. He had lost weight.

‘Okay?’ he said. He sidestepped up to her uncertainly, towering over her.

She shuffled back, feeling small. ‘Fine. You?’

‘I’ve lost some weight.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘No chocolate or sweets during the week and no biscuits on long journeys.’

‘What’s that then?’ She pointed to the packet of Hobnobs sticking out of his duffle bag.

‘Emergency rations.’

She nodded. ‘Always good to be prepared. Especially if you’re going somewhere with Jim.’

‘Where is your dad anyway?’ he asked. Nervously perhaps.

‘Behind you,’ said Jim. Tom turned. Startled. Caught unawares by Jim’s sudden appearance from nowhere. He was standing there looking pleased with himself. Victorious. Oh God, he was at it already. Establishing the pecking order. They shook hands, exchanged pleasantries while Jim gave Tom the gimlet eye.

‘Shouldn’t we be getting on the train?’ she asked with pointed exasperation.

Jim shoved a couple of tickets in her hand. ‘You’re in there. The caboose.’ He performed his usual dismissive wave in the direction of the furthest carriage.

‘Where are you sleeping?’ she asked.

He nodded vaguely at the front of the train. ‘I blagged one of the compartments with seats.’

He set off up the platform at a pace with his haversack on his back. She squinted at the flat front pocket as he walked away, wondering what he had done with the pistol.