Tarnished (39 page)

‘
It’s just a fucking lock-up
. Just a place we used for storing stuff for the club and that.’

‘And Anna Thurlow? What about her?’

Raymond jerked his head round, as if wrong-footed. ‘What do you mean? Who’s Anna Thurlow?’

‘You said you’d tell me the truth, Raymond.’

‘IT IS THE FUCKING TRUTH. I don’t know nothing about no Anna Thurlow.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Suit yourself.’

He got up. Peg noticed that he was swaying, quite drunk – there were two other empty champagne bottles on the floor beside Doll’s chair. The bottle they were sharing was the fourth, the last of Loz’s hoard.

He crossed to the door.

‘Where are you going, Raymond?’

‘Can’t I take a fucking piss if I want?’

He stumbled out of the room.

She waited.

‘Now then, girl,’ he said, coming back and adjusting his flies. Despite the stifling heat of the bungalow, he still had his very well-cut camel coat on, a coat that somehow made even this overweight little mousy man fiddling with his trouser zip seem elegant. ‘I’ve given you my confession. Now what about yours? What you doing with that ugly little gobshite, then?’

‘She’s my girlfriend.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘But you know that, don’t you? Don’t pretend you don’t know everything about me. We live together. We’ve been together for a year.’ Peg could feel the redness rushing to her cheeks.

‘Tell me something.’ He sat and shuffled his elbows forward on his knees, a one-sided smile smeared over his face. ‘Have you ever
had
a boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Never even done it with a bloke, one-night stand or nothing?’

‘No.’

‘Fuck me.’ He slapped his thigh. ‘I send you to that school to keep you away from all that. Boys and stuff. All that can spell proper trouble for young girls. If anyone knows that, I should. And you end up with a dyke. Fucking rich, innit?’

Peg looked at him through narrowed eyes.

‘Tell me something, girl. How do you know you don’t like blokes if you never done it with one?’

‘I just know, that’s all,’ Peg said. ‘I love Loz.’

‘Love Loz? And what kind of name is that? Loz the lez. Well, there’s no way you’re going to live in that flat I bought you with
that
. No way, doll.’ He sat back and crossed one leg over the other. ‘She’s a liability.’

‘Well then you can stuff it,’ Peg said, the words finding their way out of her mouth before she could even start to engage her brain. ‘You can stuff your flat and you can stuff your money. You liar.’

‘Whoah, whoah,’ Raymond said, holding his hands up flat. Then he got up and squatted down in front of her, pushing his face right into her personal space. ‘Now, I’m a liberal-minded bloke. I’ve seen the world. But do you know what this would have done to your nan, eh? She would have thought you were a right disgusting pervert.’

‘Nan wasn’t like that.’ At the mention of her grandmother, Peg’s mouth turned down and her eyes prickled hotly. Her father knew which buttons to press, and he clearly wasn’t going to be held back by the fact that Doll was still warm in her grave.

‘Oh yes she was. She’d have seen that Lez off—’

‘Loz.’

‘Lez, Loz, what difference does it make?’

‘You think you’ve got some sort of right to tell me what to do? Nan would have wanted anything for me that made me happy.’

‘Oh my mother had
very clear
ideas about right and wrong. And you don’t look or sound very happy to me, Margaret.’ He moved in even closer to her, his nose almost touching hers, his face red, the sweat gleaming on his forehead. ‘You don’t look or sound happy at all.’

‘Why do you think
that
is?’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘Do you think it could have something to do with the fact that my father couldn’t bear to hang around while my mother died naturally, so he finished her off nice and neat and then fucked off out of my life completely when I was just six years old?’

‘I didn’t—’ Raymond spluttered, showering saliva in Peg’s face. His hand went to his chest.

‘You did. You did, “Dad”. You did. And you killed your baby brother, though you were only a boy then, so I suppose we have to excuse you of
that
murder, don’t we?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Who do you think?’ Peg looked over at the door in the lounge wall that led to Jean’s.

‘Bitch!’

Gasping for air, Raymond staggered over to the bookcase and punched the wall.

‘Fucking bitch! Sooner she’s locked up in a home the better. Fuck her. Fuck.’

His hand to his chest, he fell to his knees and put his head on the swirling carpet.

Peg watched as he stayed like that.

Was he having another heart attack?

Did she care, she wondered?

Eventually, whatever it was passed enough for him to look up at her.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said.

Peg stood, drawing herself up to her full height.

‘You don’t know the first thing about me, or what I know. And you think you can buy me. It’s pathetic, Raymond.’

‘I’m just trying to pay you back,’ he said, his voice tiny. ‘I’m trying to make it up to you.’

Peg wobbled. Trying to ignore the pleading note in his voice, she steeled herself. ‘Then you have to accept that I love Loz and she is as much my wife as Mum was yours,’ she said. ‘More, by the sound of it. At least neither of us fuck other women.’

Raymond thumped the floor.

Suddenly, shockingly, Peg felt a barely resistible urge to take his head and smash it down on the ground like he had just done with his fist. She wanted to hurt him badly for every wrong he had ever done her.

The air hung heavy in the room. The peppered sweetness of his cigar, mixed with his coal-tar soap smell and the sour stink of champagne, made Peg feel sick, like someone was pulling a knotted rag up through her entrails.

Then Raymond turned.

‘Look. I’m sorry, Peg.’

Peg blinked, momentarily taken aback.

‘I spoke out of turn. I’m a bit pissed. Pissed off, too. That little dyke is mental, Margaret. She’s got these crazy ideas about me killing that girl—’

‘Killing
those
girls.’

‘And they’re all wrong. Believe me. But you believe her above me, don’t you? Why the fuck shouldn’t you? So what do I do with that, tell me, Margaret? What do I do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Peg said. ‘That’s up to you, isn’t it? As Loz would say, it’s your problem, not mine. But here’s a thing.’ She tried to control her breathing, but the urge to get at him had returned. Her knees were shaking; buckling with a fury she had never allowed herself to feel before, her throat contracting with it. ‘If you’re as innocent as you say you are – and yes, a growing part of me tends to believe her over you – you’re going to get your chance to prove it pretty soon. She’s going to the police. She’s taking those “crazy ideas” of hers to the police. At first I didn’t want her to, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps they’ll be interested, “Dad”. After all, with what you did to Mum, you’ve got form, haven’t you? Perhaps they’ll make more sense of all this than I can.’

‘The police,’ he said, the words dark in his mouth. ‘You silly little girls. You have no idea what you’re getting yourselves into.’

They stood and stared at each other. Then Jean’s intercom buzzed, cutting across the crackling silence of the room. Raymond jumped and almost stood to attention.

‘You said she was out blotto,’ Peg whispered furiously.
Had Jean been listening in to this entire conversation
?

‘Raymond?’ Jean croaked. ‘I need you in here. Now.’

He crossed to the box and pressed the answer button. ‘Yes, Jeanie,’ he said, his voice artificially softened. ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’

Then he turned to Peg.

‘Over my dead body she’s going to the police. You get in touch with this Lez and tell her that from me. She’d just better bloody not. Or else.’

‘Is that some sort of threat?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Get out,’ Peg said. ‘Go to someone who needs you. Go to Aunty Jean. My life was a lot simpler before you came back into it and I want that back again. Get out. Go back to your darling Paulie and your stupid Caroline and fuck you and fuck your flat and fuck your money.’

Raymond stood still for a moment processing this. Then his features narrowed and he levelled his eyes at her. ‘Just tell her to keep her bloody trap shut,’ he hissed. Then he turned and left.

Alone, Peg rushed through to the kitchen, shut the door, put the radio on and, with shaking hands, pulled out her mobile phone, desperate to talk to Loz. But there was no reply. The phone just rang and rang. It couldn’t be because she was at work – the plan was that she should have been with Peg that night, after all. Peg imagined Loz looking at the caller ID and, in a huff, refusing to pick up. Eventually, the voicemail cut in and Peg left her message, which was just that she was sorry and that she loved her, and that she must do whatever she saw fit. She must go to the police if that was what she wanted.

Then Peg went back to the lounge, to Doll’s cocktail cabinet, and poured a glass of the potato wine. It smelled truly disgusting, and fulfilled its promise with its flavour, but it was clearly potent and it complemented the evil taste that already tainted her mouth.

She knocked it back in one, then stumbled up the ladder to her bedroom, where, still in her smart funeral dress, she curled up on the bed and fell into a deep and dream-filled stupor.

Then

This was the August Bank Holiday, when I was about nine or ten.

It’s a sizzling, muggy day and I’ve spent the whole afternoon in the sea, floating on my back and looking at the dirty haze in the sky above me, wondering how far it goes on upwards. Nan sits on the beach, leaning against a breakwater and reading her
Mail on Sunday
.

I have a last wee in the sea. I love the feeling of the warm me flooding the colder, muddy water. Then I get out and Nan wraps me in the towelling poncho and feeds me hot chocolate from a thermos, and chocolate digestives. The poncho smells lovely, all of fabric conditioner, and it’s soft on my pruney, sea-soaked skin.

She puts more sunblock on me and we sit and chat a bit about the people around us. There are some very common people a bit further along the breakwater, and we have a bit of a laugh about them, with their stupid voices and ugly, tattooed bodies.

Then it’s time to go, because Nan has to make tea. I carry the picnic basket and Nan takes the blanket and the towel. The sky is still heavy and hot, pressing down on us. Some of the tarmac bits where they’ve mended the pavement have gone all sticky, so I’m careful not to step on them.

And now I remember that I was upset about something, or I wasn’t feeling too well, or something – I’m not sure which – which is why Nan put on this treat for me, coming down to the beach for the whole afternoon with a picnic, even though I know she didn’t really like to leave Aunty Jean on her own for more than an hour.

‘Pooh,’ I go, as we turn the corner into our street. Something’s burning.

‘Who’d be having a bonfire in this close weather?’ Nan says, shaking her head. ‘Some people haven’t got the slightest bit of sense in their heads.’

‘Look!’ I point at the plume of smoke rising from behind our bungalow.

‘Oh no,’ Nan goes, pushing the blanket and towel into my arms and rushing off. ‘Jean? Jean, dear? Are you all right?’

I follow her up the driveway and dump the stuff outside the front door, then I go after her, down to the side-entrance to the back garden.

‘Frank! What on earth are you doing?’ I hear her say, before I turn the corner, so I hang back and listen, just peeping out to see what’s going on.

Gramps is there, in his gardening shorts and vest, a knotted hanky on his head to keep his bald scalp from burning. According to Nan, the sun can burn and tan even through thick cloud, which is why I always wear sunblock.

He’s standing there, completely still, staring at a bonfire burning in the middle of the lawn as if it had hypnotised him. He is as wet with sweat as if someone has thrown a bucket of water over him.

‘I burned them, Dolly,’ he says, turning to face her, and I see his eyes are flame-red where they should be white. This isn’t my gentle Gramps. He looks like someone else entirely.

‘NO!’ Nan cries, and she pushes him to one side – right to one side, even though she’s so much tinier than he is – and runs for the hosepipe, which she yanks out of its neat roll and turns full on to the fire, putting out the flames.

Then she flings the hosepipe aside, never mind it sprays all over the place, getting Gramps even wetter than he had been with the sweat, and she starts stamping on the fire in her sandals. It must really hurt her feet.

She falls to her knees and starts pulling things out and I gasp, because I see that it’s some of her Commonplace Books Gramps has been burning. Nan is on her knees now and is making this strange little wailing sound. She flips open one of the books that hasn’t completely burned up.

‘Why?’ Nan says to Gramps, who is still standing there, now completely drenched by the hosepipe as well, just watching her. ‘Why have you done this?’

‘It’s not right, Dolly,’ Gramps says. ‘It’s not good. It’s got to stop.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Nan says. She scrabbles together the other surviving books. ‘I’ll be the judge of what’s right and good.’

Nan is really cross. Crosser than I’ve ever seen before.

Crosser than I ever saw again, in fact – except perhaps those two or three moments of dementia-fuelled confusion when she mistook concern for violation.

She stands up, holding to her chest what she has rescued from the bonfire.

‘Have you took your pills?’ she says to Gramps.

Gramps just stands there, still. Looking at her with his red old eyes.

‘You haven’t, have you? You know you have a turn when you don’t take your pills. I don’t know what you was thinking.’

‘I don’t like them, Dolly. They make me all woozy.’

‘The doctor SAID you have to take them. Remember? You HAVE to take them. Otherwise you do bad, bad things, Frank. Remember?’