The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Read online

  Mrs Morton managed to speak to everyone she met without ever stopping. My mother would pause in shop doorways and at the edge of pavements, until the carrier bags ate into her fingers and my feet scraped impatience on the concrete, but Mrs Morton seemed to be able to have a conversation as she walked, giving out small samples of herself to everyone without ever being anchored by their questions. She did, however, pause outside Woolworth’s to stare at a stack of deckchairs propped on the pavement near the doorway. Tilly and I pointed to things in baskets that we felt we needed – lawn darts and Stylophones and badminton racquets wrapped in cellophane. There were even towers of buckets and spades, and a chimney of sandcastle moulds, which reached all the way up to Tilly’s chin. The nearest beach was fifty miles away.

  I stared through the doorway at a river of Pick-n-Mix.

  ‘Shall we stand inside for a moment, to get out of the sun?’ I looked at Mrs Morton.

  ‘We’re supposed to be going to the library,’ she said.

  ‘It’s important to avoid heatstroke.’ I looked back at the Pick-n-Mix. ‘Angela Rippon said so.’

  Mrs Morton followed my gaze. ‘I think we’ll all survive,’ she said, ‘for the next three and a half minutes.’

  *

  The library was right at the end of the High Street, where the shops faded into accountants and solicitors and architects, with their Georgian fronts and thick brass plates. It looked over the park and the memorial gates, and last year’s poppies lay bleached into a bloody pink against the railings. My mother usually took me to the library, but since PC Green had been to the house, her life seemed to have become disconnected from times and dates. My parents had the same circle of conversation every few hours, in which my mother would accuse my father of lying, and my father would accuse my mother of being ridiculous, and then they would both accuse each other of being unreasonable. The words would spin around the room for a few minutes, until they span out of energy, and then they would disappear to recharge themselves for the next time my parents met on the stairs or in the hall, or across the kitchen table.

  Mrs Morton pushed the library door, and Tilly and I walked underneath her arm. After my bedroom, this was my favourite place in the world. It was carpeted, and had heavy bookcases and ticking clocks and velvet chairs, just like someone’s living room. It smelled of unturned pages and unseen adventures, and on every shelf were people I had yet to meet, and places I had yet to visit. Each time, I lost myself in the corridors of books and the polished, wooden rooms, deciding which journey to go on next.

  Mrs Morton took my last-time’s books from her bag and placed them on the front desk.

  ‘Grace Bennett’s books are returned on time,’ said the librarian. She snapped at the front cover of each one, sending little gusts of air across the counter. ‘That must be a first.’

  I gave her my biggest smile, and she handed over the tickets and frowned. Her hands were covered in ink and it had leaked into the creases around her nails.

  I had five tickets. Five adventures to choose.

  The first thing I did was visit Aslan and Mowgli, and Jo and Meg. I had read them so many times, it felt like we were friends, and I had to run my finger down the spine of each book to check it was in its proper place and make sure they were all safe, before I could even think about doing anything else. Tilly pointed at books she wanted, and I left her reading Alice in Wonderland on a very small chair in front of a very small table.

  I wandered past Mrs Morton, who was standing in front of the Westerns.

  ‘Aren’t you staying in the children’s room?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve outgrown it, Mrs Morton. I’m ten now.’

  ‘But there are some very appropriate books in there for young ladies of ten.’ She had a novel in her hand. It had a picture of a Stetson on the front, with a smoking bullet hole right through its centre.

  ‘Yes, I know, I’ve read all of them,’ I said.

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The book was called A Bullet for Beau Barrowclough.

  ‘I need to broaden my reading,’ I said.

  She put Beau Barrowclough back on his shelf. ‘Well, make sure you don’t broaden it too widely.’

  *

  I walked through the romances, behind cookery and travel, and past the side room full of old newspapers and posters about coffee mornings, to the non-fiction room at the back of the building. Here the shelves were wider and the corridors were longer, and the smell of the pages was even heavier. It was unfamiliar. The ripe, solid smell of learning. I’d just reached C when a conversation drifted across the top of the shelves.

  That’s exactly what I heard. Except I heard she’d had an argument with him.

  Oh no, no argument. Out of the blue, it was.

  One of the voices was the grumpy librarian with the inky hands.

  They moved somewhere along the aisle, and for a moment I lost reception.

  Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? Who else would it be? said the other voice, when I found them again.

  I always go and stand in the back when he comes in here. He gives me the creeps.

  He’s not right in the head, is he? You can tell by just looking at him.

  I took a dictionary of quotations from the shelf, in order to make room for my ears.

  She was in here, you know, a few days before she disappeared.

  The other voice made a surprised noise. What did she take out?

  Nothing. Didn’t have her library card. She spent about half an hour in the side room and then left.

  Wouldn’t surprise me if she was under his patio.

  Me neither. He’s got the look of a killer, that one. You can see it in his eyes.

  Oh he has, Carole. You’re so right.

  And the voices floated away from the dictionaries and the encyclopaedias, and disappeared somewhere beyond the solar system and local folklore.

  *

  ‘Have you chosen?’ Mrs Morton stood at the front desk with Tilly.

  ‘I have,’ I said, although I was using my chin to steady the tower of books in my arms, and it wasn’t easy to speak.

  ‘Grace, however many have you got there?’ said Mrs Morton. ‘You only have five tickets.’

  ‘Tilly said she’d lend me four of hers.’

  ‘I did?’ said Tilly.

  Mrs Morton turned her head to look at Tilly’s book. ‘What did you choose?’

  ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ said Tilly.

  ‘She always chooses that,’ I said. ‘She has a crush on Mr Tumnus.’

  ‘I do not!’ She pulled the book to her chest. ‘I just like the snow.’

  Mrs Morton studied my tower of books. ‘Shall we have a look?’ she said.

  She lifted the top one from the pile. ‘Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer.’ An interesting choice. And what do we have here?’ She took another book. ‘Secrets of the Black Museum.’ And another. ‘Murders of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology.’ She raised her eyebrows and stared at me.

  ‘For research,’ I said.

  She glanced at the book which now sat on the top of the pile. ‘A Bullet for Beau Barrowclough?’

  ‘It’s the cover,’ I said, ‘it spoke to me.’

  ‘I think it’s time we had a little rethink, don’t you?’

  *

  When we’d revisited the shelves, and the librarian had stamped and clicked, and run inky fingers over my rethinking, we left the carpets and the cool, polished corridors and walked into a heat which shimmered the tops of the trees and made the edges of the world wave and swim.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Tilly, and I held on to Narnia whilst she took off her jumper.

  ‘We’ll walk back through the park,’ said Mrs Morton, pointing towards the gates with the intrepidness of a sub-Saharan explorer. ‘We’ll find some shade.’

  The park wasn’t that shady. There were pockets of cool shadow, where the trees swept a darkness over the paths, but most of it was held in
a slick of heat, and we crissed and crossed to keep ourselves hidden. There were people who didn’t seem to mind. They lay on T-shirt pillows, the aerials on their radios telescoped towards the sun, forgotten novels turned into the grass. There were children paddling and squealing, the sun holding on to each kick, as their parents pulled down sunhats and rubbed cream into powdery knees.

  I realized the click of Tilly’s sandals had faded away, and I looked back. She was standing next to the bandstand, leaning into the rails, her jumper still knotted around her waist. Further along the path, Mrs Morton stopped too and blocked the sun with the edge of her hand.

  ‘I’m all right, Mrs Morton,’ Tilly said. ‘It’s just the heat. It makes your legs watery.’

  I looked at Mrs Morton’s face as she walked past me, and it made my mouth dry and uneasy.

  She looked into Tilly’s eyes and touched Tilly’s forehead and frowned, and said we should all sit for a moment in the shade of the bandstand. There was no one else in there, only streaks of bird droppings on the peeled wooden rails and an old newspaper, which turned over and over on the concrete, as a breeze read through its pages.

  Tilly said she was fine, honestly, fine, but her skin was porcelain-white and my eyes found Mrs Morton’s concern and photocopied it.

  ‘I just felt wobbly, that’s all,’ said Tilly.

  ‘You shouldn’t overdo it.’ Mrs Morton put her hand over Tilly’s. ‘You need to take special care of yourself.’

  ‘Grace said nothing bad would happen to me. She said she wouldn’t let it.’

  Mrs Morton found my eyes for a moment, and turned back. ‘Of course nothing bad is going to happen to you. But your mother likes you to be careful, doesn’t she?’

  Tilly nodded, and I saw beads of sweat move across her forehead.

  ‘So we’ll just sit here for a moment. Let you get your breath back.’

  I remembered the little kiosk next to the war memorial. ‘Maybe an ice cream would help,’ I said, ‘or a Topic?’

  Tilly shook her head and said perhaps a little sip of water would be nice.

  Mrs Morton looked around, her hand still on Tilly’s.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I’ll find you some water.’

  I escaped from the bandstand and welcomed scorched heat on my shoulders and the sound of people not worrying. The kiosk was beyond the coloured Frisbees and the transistor radios. It had stripes of pink and yellow all around its frame, and the canvas cracked and snapped in the breeze as I waited for the man to find a plastic cup.

  I looked across to the bandstand, and I didn’t want to go back. Back to the concern hidden in the edges of Mrs Morton’s eyes, and to Tilly, pale and quiet and small.

  Number Twelve, The Avenue

  9 July 1976

  Crazy, sang Patsy Cline.

  ‘Crazy,’ sang Sheila Dakin, half a second afterwards.

  She sang above the hoover, and the smell of hot summer carpets and a dust bag which begged to be emptied. Patsy knew what it was to suffer. She was a casualty of life, was Patsy. You could hear it in the vibrato. She pushed the vacuum cleaner along the hall, past a chorus line of coats and a pile-up of Keithie’s Matchbox cars, and took a sharp right into the living room.

  ‘Give it a rest, Mum.’ Lisa lifted her legs on to the settee.

  Sheila slid into a key change as she made her entrance.

  ‘Mum! I’m trying to read!’

  The vacuum cleaner knocked against the furniture, and its lead snaked around the room, gathering table legs and forgotten shoes, and the edge of an ashtray.

  ‘You’ll miss my singing when I’m not here any more.’ Sheila pulled at the flex. ‘You’ll ache to hear these notes again.’

  Lisa looked up from her magazine. ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere. But when I do, you’ll ache, Lisa Dakin. Mark my words.’

  She caught the mirror as she passed, and rubbed at the mascara under her eye, but it only sank further into the creases, and came to rest in the folds of skin which refused to unfold back to where they belonged.

  The record was scratched and worn, but the brush of the guitar always edged her a little further into the misery, and she paused the hoover to make sure she didn’t miss being edged.

  ‘Why is it always the same bloody song? There must be better songs to sing than that,’ Lisa said, turning pages.

  ‘She died in a plane crash, you know.’

  ‘You’ve said.’

  ‘She was only thirty. Her whole life ahead of her.’

  ‘I know. You’ve said.’ Lisa looked over the back of the settee. ‘You’ve also said about Marilyn, and Carole and Jayne.’

  ‘It’s worth remembering, Lisa. There’s always someone worse off than yourself.’

  ‘They’re dead, Mum.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Sheila flicked another switch, and the dust and the heat and the churn of the motor faded out. ‘That’s me done. I’m going back outside.’

  Lisa turned a page. ‘I really wish you wouldn’t sunbathe on the front. It’s not dignified.’

  Her face is changing, thought Sheila. It’s shaping itself, finding her father. With each year, Lisa moved a little further away. It must have happened slowly, meal by meal, conversation by conversation, but Sheila only noticed if there was an argument. Then she would realize there had been another step, and just how far she was being left behind. She could deal with her daughter becoming older. She could deal with the boys and the truanting, and the faint whisper of Silk Cut and chewing gum. It was the reflection it made which couldn’t be folded up and put away.

  ‘It’s my front garden,’ Sheila said. ‘I’ll do whatever I want in it.’

  ‘People stare.’

  ‘Let them bloody stare.’

  ‘It’s like going to the corner shop in your slippers, and leaving your curlers in. You just don’t do it.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Everyone else.’ Lisa turned another page. ‘And when everyone else says something, it’s probably worth listening.’

  ‘I see.’ Sheila wound the flex around the hoover. ‘So why aren’t you out there looking for a summer job? Like everyone else?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘This time next year you’ll be leaving school. Don’t think you can sit around here all day on your arse doing nothing.’

  Keithie appeared and dumped his little body on to one of the chairs. ‘I can sit around on my arse, though, can’t I?’ he said.

  Sheila looked at him. ‘For now,’ she said, ‘for now. And don’t say arse.’

  Arse, arse, arse.

  Lisa turned another page. ‘I wish Margaret Creasy would hurry up and come back. You were a different person when she was around.’

  ‘I was? How?’

  ‘Less snapping. Less swearing.’ She looked at Sheila over the top of the magazine. ‘Not so many headaches.’

  She was sharp, like her mother. Too sharp.

  ‘She’ll be back,’ said Sheila. ‘It’s the heat. It knocks daft into people.’

  ‘Unless Walter’s had her. He likes making people disappear.’

  Sheila looked over at Keithie. He was digging the end of a pen into the arm of the chair, flooded with concentration.

  Arse, arse, arse.

  ‘Careful,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t understand.’

  Lisa put her magazine down. ‘He knows the crack, don’t you, Keithie?’

  ‘Strange Walter,’ said Keithie. ‘He’s like a magician. He makes people disappear.’

  He laughed. A fizzy, bubbly laugh that only children can find.

  ‘Doesn’t understand, my arse,’ said Lisa.

  Arse, arse, arse.

  ‘Don’t say arse!’ Sheila picked up a cushion and put it back on the settee.

  ‘I don’t know why he hasn’t moved on.’ Lisa spoke without taking her eyes from the page. ‘Someone should do something. He stares all the time.’

  ‘Stares?’

  ‘He gives me th
e creeps.’ Denim shifted over denim. ‘When I’m with my friends, he stands at that front window, watching everyone. Like he’s trying to figure out what to do next.’

  Sheila tried to twist the plug around the flex, but she couldn’t manage it without taking her eyes off Lisa. ‘Has he said anything to you?’

  ‘Mum, that’s the point.’ There they were, those extra teenage syllables. ‘He never speaks. He just watches.’

  ‘You’d tell me – if he did?’

  There was a brief nod. Lisa pulled at her hair, taking out the band, and it slipped across her shoulder unsupervised, faultless. ‘Someone should do something,’ she said. ‘We all think someone should do something.’

  Sheila was about to reply, when she heard footsteps on the path.

  ‘Doorbell!’ said Keithie, and shot out of the room before anyone could stop him.

  Arse, arse, arse all the way down the hall.

  ‘God, I hope it’s not that policeman again,’ said Lisa. ‘Right bloody laugh a minute he was.’

  ‘He needn’t bother.’ Sheila lifted a cold cup of coffee from the table. It had left rings on the wood where it had waited for her. ‘We’ve said all there is to say.’

  ‘You know he was at number four yesterday? Spent ages in there. I saw Derek Bennett this morning, and he looked like he’d been shot.’

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you.’ Lisa stared. ‘You were still in bed when I went out. I got Keith’s breakfast and I dressed him, and I put up with his bloody questions.’

  Sheila gripped the cup. It had a skin of milk, yellow and tired, catching at the edges. ‘I was exhausted,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Lisa looked back at her magazine. ‘I’d be exhausted too.’

  ‘If you’ve got something to say, why don’t you just bloody say it?’