The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Read online

  *

  ‘You can smoke in here, Brian.’ His mother nods at a bloated ashtray. ‘You could help me string these Christmas cards.’

  She is pushing the cards into tiny red and green pegs, like bunting, and coming to the end of a packet of custard creams.

  ‘I fancied a bit of fresh air, Mam.’

  ‘As long as you don’t forget your kidneys,’ she says.

  He walks over to the window and pulls the curtain a fraction, just enough to stare through an inch of glass.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Her voice twitches with interest, and she rests the cards on her lap.

  ‘Number eleven.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d gone away with his mother. I thought we’d all agreed there was no point watching the house until he gets back.’

  ‘There’s someone in his garden.’

  She is on her feet. A pile of Christmas cards somersault into the air, and three lowly mangers and a donkey fall to the carpet.

  ‘Well, if you’re going to do it, do it properly,’ she says. ‘Switch the big light off and pull the curtains back.’

  He does as he’s told, and they both stare out into the darkness.

  ‘Do you see anything?’ she says.

  He doesn’t. They watch in silence.

  Sheila Dakin visits her dustbin, and the avenue fills with the sound of glass drumming against metal. Sylvia Bennett draws the curtains back in one of the upstairs rooms and stares into the road. It feels as though she is looking straight at them, and Brian ducks below the windowsill.

  ‘She can’t see you, you daft bugger,’ his mother says. ‘The light’s off.’

  Brian resurfaces, and when he looks up, Sylvia has disappeared.

  ‘Perhaps it was those lads from the estate again,’ says his mother. ‘Perhaps they came back.’

  Brian leans into the window. His legs are going dead and the back of the settee is pushing into his ribcage. ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he says. ‘Not after what happened.’

  His mother sniffs. ‘Well, I can’t see anything. You must have imagined it, there’s no one out there.’

  As she speaks, Brian sees it again. Movement behind the thin, leafless trees which stand in Walter Bishop’s garden.

  ‘There.’ He taps on the glass. ‘Do you see them now?’

  His mother presses her face against the window and breaths of fascination travel across the view.

  ‘Well I never,’ says his mother. ‘What on earth is he doing?’

  ‘Who?’ Brian joins her at the glass. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Move your head, Brian. You always get it in the way.’

  ‘Who is it?’ he says again, moving his head.

  His mother folds a pair of satisfied arms across her chest. ‘Harold Forbes,’ she says. ‘That’s definitely Harold Forbes.’

  ‘Is it?’ Brian risks putting his head near the glass again. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I’d know that hump anywhere. Very poor posture, that man.’

  They both stare into the dark, and their reflections stare back at them from the glass, ghostly white and open-mouthed, and painted with curiosity.

  ‘There are some very odd people about,’ says his mother.

  Brian’s eyes adjust to the night, and after a moment he sees the figure, slightly bent and occupied with something he’s holding in his hands. He is moving between the trees, making his way around the front of number eleven. It’s definitely a man, but Brian has no idea how his mother can be so certain it’s Harold Forbes.

  ‘What is he carrying?’ Brian wipes breath from the glass. ‘Can you tell?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ says his mother, ‘but that’s not what interests me the most.’

  Brian turns to her and frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What interests me the most,’ says his mother, ‘is who has he got there with him?’

  She’s right. Beyond the stooped, wandering figure in the trees, there is a second person. They’re slightly taller than the first, and straighter, and they are pointing to something at the back of the house. He tries to press his face further into the glass, but the image just blurs and distorts and becomes an untidiness of shapes and shadows.

  Brian puts forward a number of possibilities, all dismissed by his mother as too young, too old, too tall.

  ‘So who do you think it is, then?’ says Brian.

  His mother pulls herself to her full height and presses her chin into the flesh of her neck.

  ‘I have my suspicions,’ she says, ‘but of course, it would be wrong of me to speculate.’

  There is only one thing his mother enjoys more than gossip, and that is withholding it from an interested party, based on her sudden unearthing of the moral high ground.

  They argue. Brian never wins their arguments, his mother is far too practised and far too stubborn, and by the time he gives up and looks back into the avenue, the figures have disappeared.

  ‘That’s that then,’ says his mother. The cards still lie on the carpet, and she gathers several Virgin Marys on the way back to the settee.

  ‘What do you think they were doing?’ Brian says.

  She takes another biscuit, and he has to wait for an answer until she has prised off the lid of the custard cream and examined its contents.

  ‘Well, whatever it is,’ she says, ‘let’s hope it involves getting rid of Bishop once and for all. We’ve had too many incidents around here just lately.’

  For once, he agrees with her. The last few weeks had seen one disruption after another. The police never used to visit the avenue at all, now it seems as though they’re never away from the place.

  ‘I know one thing.’ His mother bites into her custard cream, and a spray of crumbs settle themselves down on the antimacassar. ‘It’s a good job you’re here, Brian. I wouldn’t be able to sleep in my bed, otherwise. Not as long as that man’s still at the top of the road.’

  Brian leans back on the windowsill, but it digs into his spine, cracking against his vertebrae. The room is too hot. His mother has always kept it too hot. As a child he would stand in this very spot, staring through the window, trying to work out a way of making the heat escape and disappear forever.

  ‘I’m going for another cigarette,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t smoke in here, Brian. Isn’t my company good enough for you?’

  She has gone back to threading Christmas cards. There is a theme, Brian thinks. She is threading another Baby Jesus on to a row. There are thirteen stars of Bethlehem. Thirteen preoccupied donkeys. A queue of Baby Jesuses to hang across the mantelpiece and watch them eat their Christmas dinner in silent, paper hats.

  ‘I just fancy a bit of fresh air,’ he says.

  ‘Well, don’t be gone ages. You know with my nerves I don’t like being on my own for too long. Not until all this nonsense is sorted out.’

  Brian takes his tobacco tin and box of matches from the windowsill. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he says.

  And he walks back into the darkness.

  Number Four, The Avenue

  5 July 1976

  It was Monday. The first real day of the holidays. The summer built a dusty bridge to September, and I lay in bed for as long as I could, holding on to the moment before I took the first step.

  I could hear my parents in the kitchen. The noises were familiar, a sequence of cupboards and plates and doors, and I knew which sound would come next, like a piece of music. I squashed the pillow under my head and listened, and I watched a breeze press into the curtains, sending them billowing like sails. Still I knew it wouldn’t rain. You could smell rain, my father said, like you could smell the seaside. All I could smell as I lay in bed was Remington’s porridge and a drift of bacon climbing into the room from someone else’s kitchen. I wondered if I could get away with going back to sleep, but then I remembered I needed to find God and Mrs Creasy, and my breakfast.

  *

  My mother was being very quiet. She was quiet
when I walked into the kitchen, she was quiet for the entire time I ate my Rice Krispies, and she was still quiet when I put my bowl in the sink. Although it was strange that, even when she was quiet, she still managed to be the loudest person in the room.

  My father sat in the corner, cleaning his shoes on a piece of newspaper, whilst my mother orbited the cupboards. Every so often, he said something very ordinary to see if he could tempt someone into a conversation. He had already tried the weather, but no one had joined in. He’d even spoken to Remington, but Remington just beat his tail against the lino and looked confused.

  ‘First day of the holidays, then,’ he said.

  ‘Mmm.’ I crouched in front of the fridge, and stared inside to imagine what my lunch might be.

  ‘So how are you and Tilly spending the summer?’

  ‘We’re finding God,’ I said, from inside the fridge.

  ‘God?’ he said. I could hear the brush drag across leather. ‘That’ll keep you occupied.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be that difficult. He is everywhere.’

  ‘Everywhere?’ said my father. ‘I’m not sure He hangs around on this estate much.’

  ‘Don’t start again, Derek.’ I peered above the fridge door and watched my mother feed cutlery into the drawer from a tea towel. ‘I’ve told you why I’m not going.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, but now you come to mention it …’

  I sat very still, behind a blackcurrant yoghurt and a dozen free-range eggs.

  ‘I shouldn’t need to explain myself. You go to enough funerals in your life, without going to the ones you don’t have to.’

  ‘I’m just worried no one will turn up.’ My father had stopped brushing and stared at his shoes. ‘I’d go myself if I wasn’t at work. Two o’clock’s a really bad time.’

  ‘Thin Brian’s mum will be there,’ said my mother.

  ‘She goes to everyone’s funeral. It’s the only time she ever leaves the house.’ My father patted his brush into the tin of polish. ‘They all cancel each other out.’

  ‘I didn’t even know Enid very well.’ My mother held her hands to her face, and I heard her sigh escape through the gaps. ‘It’s awful she died on her own, but I don’t see how going to her funeral will make her feel any better about it.’

  The woman on Mulberry Drive. I was becoming an excellent detective.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said my father, and the sound of my mother’s silence started all over again.

  *

  ‘I can’t believe Mrs Forbes fibbed to us,’ said Tilly.

  I had called an emergency meeting in my bedroom. It wasn’t ideal, because Tilly was very easily distracted, but Mrs Morton had gone to visit her husband’s grave and stock up on Penguins, and her kitchen table had become temporarily unavailable.

  I thought about my parents. They fibbed about the amount of time it would take to get somewhere and exactly how long my tea would be, and although my mother always said my presents were from both of them, when I opened each one on Christmas morning, my father always looked as surprised as I did.

  ‘Grown-ups fib all the time,’ I said. ‘The most important thing is why Mrs Forbes did it.’

  I wrote the date in my notebook. I knew Tilly was looking at the Whimsies on the shelf behind my head. I could see her eyes following the line. ‘You have a bushbaby,’ she said, ‘and a giraffe. I don’t have either of those.’

  ‘Tilly, you need to concentrate.’

  Her eyes reached the end of the shelf. ‘You have two bushbabies,’ she said. ‘Two. I don’t even have one.’

  ‘They’re a pair,’ I said. ‘They match. There are supposed to be two.’

  ‘I didn’t know they came in pairs. I suppose they can’t be separated then.’

  ‘Tilly, this isn’t about Whimsies. We’re supposed to be making a plan.’

  ‘I knew she wasn’t telling the truth,’ said Tilly.

  My pen rested on the line. ‘How?’

  ‘She had that look. The same kind of look my mum gets when she talks about my dad. I know it’s her handwriting in my Christmas cards.’

  ‘My mother writes all my Christmas cards.’

  ‘It’s not the same, though, is it?’ said Tilly.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t suppose it is.’

  The breeze tapped against the curtains. My mother spent all day drawing the curtains to keep the heat out, and then drawing them back to let it escape again. I climbed across the bed, and around Tilly, and pulled them open a fraction. Tilly turned and looked through the glass.

  ‘What’s Mr Creasy doing?’ she said.

  John Creasy stood in the middle of the avenue, staring towards the bottom of the road.

  ‘He’s waiting for the bus,’ I said, ‘it stops at the end of the avenue at five to eleven.’

  ‘Shouldn’t he stand at the bus stop?’

  ‘Oh no, he doesn’t want to catch it. He’s waiting to see if it drops Mrs Creasy off. He waits every day,’ I said.

  The bus pulled up as we watched. I could hear the brakes hiss and spit, and the flat cough of the engine, but the platform stayed empty, and Mr Creasy walked towards his house with his hands deep in his pockets. We turned back to the notebook.

  ‘Who else was in the picnic photograph?’ said Tilly.

  I lifted my legs on the bed. ‘Mr and Mrs Forbes,’ I said, ‘and Mrs Creasy.’

  ‘Yes, but who else?’

  I shut my eyes and tried to see. I’d been too interested in looking at Mrs Forbes with her hair pinned in waves, and the image swam and swayed behind my eyelids.

  ‘Thin Brian,’ I said eventually. ‘Thin Brian was definitely there.’

  Tilly frowned. ‘Who is Thin Brian?’

  ‘Mr Roper. He lives at number two with his mum.’

  ‘Is there a Fat Brian?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘No,’ I said, ‘there isn’t.’

  ‘So shall we go and find out what he knows?’

  ‘Oh yes, we will. But not this afternoon.’

  Tilly looked up and scratched the end of her nose with her jumper. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this afternoon,’ I said, ‘we’re going to a funeral.’

  *

  ‘I’m not sure this is such a good idea, Gracie.’ Tilly stood in front of my wardrobe and stared into the mirror.

  ‘You told me you didn’t have anything black,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s a poncho.’

  ‘It has black in it,’ I said.

  She peered at herself. ‘It has lots of other colours in it as well.’

  ‘It’s important to wear black at a funeral. It’s respectful.’

  ‘What black are you wearing?’

  ‘I was going to wear my black socks,’ I said, ‘but it’s too hot, so I’m wearing a black watchstrap.’

  I tried to hand her my spare pair of sunglasses, but then I realized she hadn’t got any arms, so I put the sunglasses on to her face. ‘I still don’t understand why we’re going,’ she said.

  ‘Because no one else might. I heard my father telling my mother.’

  ‘But we didn’t even know the woman on Mulberry Drive.’

  I looked at our reflections in the mirror. ‘It’s not important,’ I said. ‘Someone has to be there. Imagine no one going to your funeral. Imagine leaving and no one caring enough to say goodbye to you.’

  There was a lump in my throat, and I had no idea where it came from. I had to squeeze the words past it to speak, and when they appeared, they sounded trembly and strange from all the squeezing.

  Tilly frowned at me and tried to hold out her hand through the wool. ‘Don’t get upset, Gracie.’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ I said. ‘I just need her to know that she mattered.’

  I pulled my hand away and I tried to swallow everything back down. I was older and meant to be setting an example.

  I put my sunglasses on and smoothed down my hair. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘God will be there. We might uncover some clues.’

&nbs
p; *

  We weren’t the only people in the church, and I was glad, because I never understood when you were supposed to sit and stand and kneel, and it was useful to have someone else to copy. Mrs Roper sat at the front, rubbing her feet, and next to her was the barman from the British Legion, although there was no sign of Thin Brian. On the second row, there were two old men who both seemed to be talking to themselves. We slid into the pews right at the back, so that we could discuss everything. As we were arranging our feet on the cushions, Mr and Mrs Forbes walked in. Mrs Forbes went towards the front, but Mr Forbes pulled her arm and jabbed his finger at some seats nearer the middle, where Eric Lamb was sitting.

  ‘I wonder if God knows about Mrs Forbes and how much she fibs,’ whispered Tilly, and smoothed down her poncho.

  The vicar had met us at the door and said that he didn’t know we were friends with Enid, and I told him we were like daughters to her, and he said, did we know she was ninety-eight? We’d taken a hymn book between us and nodded underneath our sunglasses. Somewhere above our heads, the organ was playing introduction music. The notes were soft and apologetic, and they soaked into the stone and the wood before they even had a chance to be heard.

  ‘Is that Jesus?’ said Tilly.

  I followed her eyes to a statue. The man was wearing red and gold material, which was wrapped around him in folds, and he stood on a piece of wood halfway up to the ceiling. He held his hand out as though he was inviting us up there to join him.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘He has a beard.’

  ‘They all have beards, though, don’t they?’

  I glanced around and realized there were lots of people standing on pieces of wood, looking down on us. It was confusing, because they all looked thoughtful and slightly disappointed, and all of a sudden it wasn’t really very clear at all which one was Jesus.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think Jesus is this one. He looks the most religious.’

  Whilst we were deciding, the vicar walked down the aisle and stood in front of Enid’s coffin.

  She must have been very small.

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ says the Lord. ‘The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.’