The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Read online

  But his mother was lost to the chocolates, gripped by bunions and Orange Cremes and the film now starting on BBC2. He knew she would be exactly the same when he returned from the Legion. He knew she would have pulled the blanket over her legs, and the Milk Tray box would be massacred and left to the carpet, and the television would be playing out a conversation with itself in the corner. He knew that she would not have risked moving from the edges of her crocheted existence. A world within a world, a life she had embroidered for herself over the past few years, which seemed to shrink and tighten with each passing month.

  The avenue was silent. He pulled the lid from the dustbin and tipped the cigarettes inside, sending a cloud of ash into his face. When he had finished coughing and swiping at the air, and trying to find his next breath, he looked up and saw Sylvia in the garden of number four. Derek wasn’t with her – or Grace. She was alone. He rarely saw her alone, and he dared to watch for a moment. She hadn’t looked up. She was picking at weeds, throwing them into a bucket and brushing the soil from her hands. Every so often, she straightened her back, and gathered her breath and wiped her forehead with the back of a hand. She hadn’t changed. He wanted to tell her, but he knew it would only lead to more trouble.

  He felt a line of sweat edge into his collar. He didn’t know how long he’d been watching, but she looked up and saw him. She lifted her hand to wave, but he turned just in time and got back inside.

  He put the ashtray on the footstool.

  ‘Make sure you’re home by ten,’ his mother said, ‘I’ll need my ointment.’

  The Royal British Legion

  4 July 1976

  The Legion was empty, apart from the two old men in the corner. Every time Brian saw them, they were sitting in the same place, and wearing the same clothes, and having the same exchange. They looked at each other as they spoke, but had two separate conversations, each man lost in his own words. Brian adjusted his eyes after the walk down. It was cooler in here, and darker. Summer soaked into the flocked walls and the polished wood. It was swallowed by the cool slate of the snooker table, and fell into the thread of the carpet, worn down by heavy conversation. The Legion didn’t have a season. It could have been the middle of winter, except for the sweat that caught the edge of Brian’s shirt and the pull of walking in his legs.

  Clive sat on a stool at the end of the bar, feeding crisps to a black terrier, who stamped his paws and whistled at the back of his throat if he felt the gap between crisps had become too long.

  ‘Pint, is it?’ he said, and Brian nodded.

  He eased from the stool. ‘Another warm one,’ he said, and Brian nodded again.

  Brian handed his money over. There were too many coins. He lifted his pint and beer slipped from the top of the glass and on to the counter.

  ‘Still looking for work?’ Clive took a cloth and ran it across the wood.

  Brian murmured something into his glass and looked away.

  ‘Tell me about it, love. If they cut my hours any more, I’ll have to go back on the game.’ He turned his hand and examined his nails.

  Brian stared at him over the top of his glass.

  ‘It’s a bloody joke,’ said Clive, and he laughed, and Brian tried to laugh with him, but he couldn’t quite get there.

  *

  He was on his second pint when they arrived. Harold walked in first, all shorts and shouting.

  ‘Evening, evening,’ he said, even though the bar was still empty. The men in the corner nodded and looked away.

  ‘Clive!’ Harold said, as though Clive was the last person he expected to see. They shook each other’s hand and put their other hands over the top of the shake, until there was a pile of shaking and commotion.

  Brian watched them.

  ‘Double Diamond?’ Harold nodded at Brian’s glass.

  Brian said no, he’d buy his own, thanks, and Harold said suit yourself, and he turned back to Clive and smiled, as though there was a whole other conversation going on that Brian couldn’t hear. In the middle of the unheard conversation, Eric Lamb arrived with Sheila Dakin, and Clive had to disappear into the back to find a cherry for Sheila’s Babycham.

  By the time Brian followed them to the table, he found himself wedged against the wall, trapped between the cigarette machine and the mystery of Sheila Dakin’s bosom.

  She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Have you started smoking again, Brian? You smell like an old ashtray.’

  ‘It’s my mam,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe think about getting your hair cut as well,’ she said, and dipped her cherry in the Babycham. ‘It looks a right bloody mess.’

  There was a radio on somewhere, and Brian could hear a slur of music, but he couldn’t tell what it was. The Drifters, maybe, or The Platters. He wanted to ask Clive to turn it up, but Clive had been standing at the end of the bar for the last five minutes, twisting a tea towel into the same pint glass and trying to listen to their conversation. It was the last thing he’d want to do.

  ‘Order, order.’ Harold said and tapped the edge of a beer mat on the table, even though no one was speaking. ‘I’ve called this meeting because of recent events.’

  Brian realized he was nearly at the end of his pint. He swilled the glass around to try and catch the foam which patterned the sides.

  ‘Recent events?’ Sheila twisted at her earring. It was heavy and bronze, and Brian thought it looked like something you might find on a totem pole. It dragged the flesh towards her jaw, and pulled the hole in her ear into a jagged line.

  ‘This business with Margaret Creasy.’ Harold still held the beer mat between his fingers. ‘John has it in his head it’s something to do with number eleven. Got himself in a right state after church last weekend.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Sheila. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  Harold looked at her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t expect you were.’

  ‘Cheeky sod.’ She began twisting at the other earring. Her laugh took up the whole table.

  Harold leaned forward, even though there wasn’t any space to lean into.

  ‘We just all need to be clear,’ he said, ‘about what happened.’

  The music had finished. Brian could hear Clive’s tea towel squeak against the glass and the hum of the old men shuffling their words.

  ‘You might as well sit down, Clive, as stand over there.’ Eric Lamb nodded at the empty stool with his glass. ‘You’re as much a part of this as any of us.’

  Clive took a step back and pulled the tea towel into his chest, and said he didn’t really think it was his place, but Brian saw Harold persuade him over with his eyes, and Clive dragged the stool across the lino and pulled himself between Harold and Sheila.

  ‘I deliberately didn’t ask John tonight.’ Harold sat back and folded his arms. ‘We don’t need another scene.’

  ‘What makes him think it’s anything to do with number eleven?’ Sheila had finished her Babycham, and was turning the stem of the glass between her fingers. It crept towards the edge of the table.

  ‘You know John. He’s always looking for something to worry about,’ said Harold, ‘he can’t keep his mind still.’

  Brian agreed, although he would never say so. When they were kids, John used to count buses. He reckoned they were lucky.

  The more buses we see the better, he said, it stops bad things happening. It would make them late for school, walking round the long way, trying to spot as many as they could. Brian would say, It’s made us late, how can that be lucky and laugh, but John would just gnaw at the skin around his fingers and say that they can’t have seen enough.

  ‘John doesn’t think that pervert’s done her in, does he?’ said Sheila. The glass tipped towards the floor, and Eric guided her hand back.

  ‘Oh no. Nothing like that, no. No.’ Harold said no too many times, they came out of his mouth like a string of bunting. He looked down at the beer mat.

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if he has,’ said Sheila, ‘I still reckon he took that babbie.’r />
  Harold looked at her for a moment, and then lowered his eyes.

  ‘The baby turned up safe, though, Sheila.’ Eric took the glass from her hand. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  ‘Bloody pervert,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what the police said. It’s a normal avenue, full of normal people. He doesn’t belong there.’

  A silence unfolded across the table. Brian could hear the Guinness slide down Eric Lamb’s throat, and the tea towel crease and pleat between Clive’s fingers. He could hear the twist of Sheila’s earring, and the tap of Harold’s beer mat on the wood, and he heard pockets of his own breath escaping his mouth. The silence became a sound all of its own. It pushed against his ears until he could stand it no longer.

  ‘Margaret Creasy talked to my mam a lot,’ he said. He put the pint glass to his mouth. It was almost empty.

  ‘About what?’ said Harold. ‘Number eleven?’

  Brian shrugged behind the glass. ‘I never sat with them,’ he said. ‘They played Gin Rummy for hours in the backroom. Good company, my mam said she was. A good listener.’

  ‘She was always in and out of your house, Harold.’ Sheila clicked open her purse and put a pound note in front of Clive.

  ‘She was? I never saw her.’

  ‘Probably keeping Dorothy company,’ she said, ‘while you were out and about.’

  Brian went to put a tower of coins on the note, but Sheila brushed him away.

  ‘Dorothy saw Margaret Creasy going into number eleven,’ said Harold. ‘She’s just as hysterical about it as John is. She thinks someone’s said something.’

  Clive pulled the empty glasses together, catching each one with a finger. ‘What is there to say? The police said the fire was an accident.’

  ‘You know Dorothy,’ said Harold, ‘she’ll tell anybody anything, she doesn’t know what she’s saying half of the time.’

  The glasses rattled as they left the table.

  ‘As long as the police don’t change their minds and start digging everything up again.’ For once, Sheila’s voice was low. She still held on to the purse, and Brian watched her click at the clasp. Her hands were rough from the heat, and the polish on her nails crept away from the edges in ragged lines.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sheila, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.’ There was no one else in the bar. Even the old men had left. Still Harold scanned a room of empty chairs behind him, then turned back and edged himself nearer the table. ‘Stop scaremongering. We agreed back then that we just made our feelings known, that’s all. The rest of it was chance.’

  Brian leaned back in his chair. He could feel the edge of the cigarette machine biting into his shoulder. ‘She talked to everyone, though, didn’t she? She went round the whole avenue. You don’t know what she found out. She was smart, Mrs Creasy. Really smart.’

  Sheila pushed her purse back into her handbag. ‘I hate to bloody say it, but Brian’s right. Perhaps she knew more than any of us.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Eric Lamb. He stretched the words out, like instructions.

  Now his glass was gone, Brian didn’t know what to do with his hands. He pressed his thumb into the drips of beer on the table, pulling them into lines, trying to make a pattern. This was the problem when people had known you since you were a child, they could never quite let go of assuming you needed to be told what to think.

  ‘We just need to stay calm,’ said Harold. ‘None of this loose talk. We did nothing wrong, understood?’

  Brian shrugged his shoulders, and his jacket creaked and crackled in reply. Probably wasn’t leather after all.

  *

  They walked back through the estate, Sheila linking her arm through Brian’s to steady herself, because her shoes were bloody impossible to walk in. Brian didn’t think her shoes were the problem, but he offered her his arm anyway. It was almost ten. Eric Lamb had gone on ahead, and they’d left Harold at the Legion, helping Clive to close up. It was the best part of the day, Brian thought. The heat had faded into a heavy silence, and there was even a pale breeze, pushing into the quietness and tracing a path through the highest leaves.

  As they reached the garages at the end of the avenue, Sheila stopped to pull at the strap on her shoe, and she wavered and swayed, and leaned into Brian to keep her balance. ‘Bloody things,’ she said.

  He stared at the road. Light escaped from the sky and pressed against the horizon, taking the familiar and the safe along with it. In the dusk, the houses looked different, exposed somehow, as though they had been stripped of their disguise. They faced each other, like adversaries, and right at the top, set back from the rest, was number eleven.

  Still, silent, waiting.

  Sheila looked up and followed his gaze. ‘Makes no sense, does it?’ she said. ‘Why would you stay when you know you’re not wanted?’

  Brian shrugged. ‘Perhaps he feels the same about us. Perhaps he’s waiting for an apology.’

  Sheila laughed. It was thin and angry. ‘He’ll wait a bloody long time for mine.’

  ‘But do you really think he did it? Do you really think he took the baby?’

  She stared at him. Her whole face seemed to narrow and tighten, until the whites of her eyes were lost to hatred. ‘He’s the type, isn’t he? You’ve only got to look at him. You’re not that thick, Brian.’

  He felt colour wash across his face. He was glad she wouldn’t notice.

  ‘Strange Walter,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly. Even the kids can see it.’

  He glanced at the lights in Sheila’s window. ‘Who’s sitting with yours?’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘They don’t need no sitter. Our Lisa’s old enough now. She’s sharp, just like her mother. I trained her well.’

  He looked over at number eleven again. It was becoming lost to the light, the edge of the roof slipping into an inky black. ‘It’s what kids do, though, isn’t it?’ he said, ‘Copy their mams and dads?’

  Sheila’s shoes dragged on the pavement, pulling at the concrete with their heels. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And don’t you go feeling sorry for Walter Bishop. People like that don’t deserve sympathy. They’re not like us.’

  The rattle of the latch reached across an empty road.

  ‘Do you really think the police will be interested in the fire?’ he said. ‘After all this time?’

  She turned in the half-light. He couldn’t see her face, just an outline. A shadow slipping and shifting against the darkening bricks. When she answered, it was a whisper, but he heard it creep across the silence.

  ‘We’d better bloody hope not,’ she said.

  And her shoes scraped against the step, and a key twisted in a lock, and Brian watched as the last piece of daylight was stolen from the sky.

  He crossed over, towards home, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He thought he’d imagined it at first, but then he felt it again, cardboard rubbing against his knuckles. He stopped and pulled at the ripped lining until it broke free.

  A library ticket.

  He stood underneath the street lamp, and the name on the ticket was caught in liquid, orange light.

  Mrs Margaret Creasy.

  He frowned and folded it in half, and he pushed it back against the lining, until it finally disappeared.

  *

  Brian stood in the doorway and looked into the sitting room. The giant cave of his mother’s sleeping mouth looked back at him, and it made the rest of her face seem strangely trivial. The Milk Tray was disembowelled on the footstool, and the debris of her evening decorated the carpet – knitting needles and crossword puzzles and television pages torn from a newspaper.

  ‘Mam?’ he said. Not loud enough to wake her, but loud enough to reassure himself that he’d tried.

  She snored back to him. Not the violent, churning snore that you would expect, but something softer. A thoughtful snore. His father once said that his mother was delicate and graceful when they first met, and Brian wondered if her snoring was all th
at was left of that narrow, fragile woman.

  He stared at his mother’s mouth. He wondered how many words had fallen out of it and into Margaret Creasy’s ears. She couldn’t help herself. It was as though she used hearsay as a web to trap people’s attention, that she didn’t believe she was interesting enough to hold on to them any other way.

  His mother’s mouth widened a little more, her eyes squeezed a little more tightly, and from somewhere deep in her chest came the faint rasp of unconsciousness.

  Brian wondered if she’d told Margaret Creasy about the night of the fire. About what she saw, or thought she saw, in the shadowed corners of the avenue.

  And he wondered if these had been the magic words that had made Margaret Creasy disappear.

  20 December 1967

  Brian draws the flame of the match into his roll-up, and watches the tobacco spark and flicker in the darkness.

  He can smoke indoors if he wants to. The rooms are painted with the yellow skin of his mother’s cigarettes, but he prefers to stand outside, to feel a bite of winter against his face and stare into the blackness undisturbed.

  The avenue is held in a frosted quiet. All the houses are buttoned up against the cold, three bars on the fire, condensation climbing high in the windows. There are Christmas trees peeping through gaps in the curtains, but Brian doesn’t feel very much like Christmas. He doubts anyone does, in all honesty, after everything that’s happened.

  The roll-up is thin and quick. It scratches the back of his throat and tightens his chest. He decides to take one last drag and go back into the carpet warmth of the kitchen, when he sees a movement at the top of the road. Somewhere at the edge of number eleven, there is a shift in the darkness, a brief change of light which catches the corner of his attention as he’s about to turn.

  He shields the cigarette in his palm to cover its glow, and tries to pull the view into his eyes, but beyond the orange pool of the streetlight, the shapes die away into an inked black.

  But there was definitely a movement.

  And as he closes the back door, he’s sure he hears the sound of disappearing footsteps.