“I used to have a watch,” Mart said. “But Police Constable Delingbole stamped on it.” He looked up at her from the corner and begged, “Don’t be long.”
Lucky that Colette had gone to Guildford! Al could count on her to be away for some hours. In that time she could give the boy some advice and twenty quid, and set him on his way. Colette had things to do—pop into the occult shop on White Lion Walk with some flyers, etc.—but mainly she would be going shopping, trawling around the House of Fraser for that elusive perfect lip shade, and getting her hair cut into a white pudding-bowl shape. Colette’s hair never seemed to grow, not so that you noticed, yet she felt some sort of social obligation to have it trimmed and tweaked every six weeks. When she came home she would stand before the mirror and rage at the stylist, but it never looked any different— not that Alison could see.
Her telephone consultation ran the full hour, and after it Al was so hungry that she had to grab a bowl of cornflakes, standing up in the kitchen. A feeling, something like fellow-feeling, was hauling her back in the direction of Mart; she hated to think of him shrinking from the light, crouching on the hard floor.
“First I was a white-liner,” Mart said. “That’s where you paint lines on the road, excellent daily rate and no previous experience required. A truck picked us up every morning at the bandstand and took us to where we were lining that day. You see, Pinto was with me. He got bored of it. I didn’t get bored of it, I liked it. But Pinto, he started painting little islands in the road, then he said, go on, go on, let’s do a box junction. It took us an hour. But when they saw it, they weren’t all that keen. They said, you’re off the job, mate, and the ganger said, come here while I give you a smack with this shovel.” Mart rubbed his head, his eyes distant. “But then they said, we’ll give you another chance, you can go on roadworks. We got put on human traffic light. Twirling a sign: STOP__GO. But the motorists wouldn’t observe me. Stop-and-go when they fucking well liked. So the boss says, lads, you’re not in sync. He says that’s your big problem that you’ve got. You’re twirling, but you’re not twirling in sync. So I got took off that job.”
“And then?”
Al had been to the garage to fetch them two folding garden chairs. She didn’t feel she could keep standing, with her back to the shed wall and Mart crouching at her feet. It was natural for Mart to want to tell his life story, his career history, just to reassure her that he wasn’t an axe murderer; not that anything he had told her had actually reassured her of that, but she thought, I would have a feeling, my skin would prickle and I’d know.
“So then …” Mart said. He frowned.
“Don’t worry,” Al said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”
All Mart’s jobs seemed to have involved hanging about in public places. For a while he was a car park attendant, but they said he didn’t attend it enough. He was a park patroller, selling tickets for the attractions. “But some little lads knocked me down and robbed my tickets and threw them in the pond.”
“Didn’t the hospital give you any help? When you got out?”
“You see, I came through the net,” Mart said. “I’m an outloop. I’m on a list, but I’m not computerate yet. I think—the list I was on—I think they lost it.”
More than likely, Al thought. I dare say, when I was a kid, people put me on a list. I expect they made a list of bruises, that sort of thing, noticeable marks. But it never came to anything. I guess that list got put in a file; I guess that file got left in a drawer; “I’d like to know,” she said, “how you got in trouble with the police.”
Mart said, “I was at the zone. I was near the scene. I had to be somewhere. Somebody had to be there. Police Constable Delingbole beat the shit out of me.”
“Mart, ought you to be taking your pills? What time do you have them?”
“You see, we got some stickers and we put them on people’s cars, that were parked. We waited till we saw them leave and then we came with the stickers and put NO PARKING BY ORDER on their windscreen. Then we hid in the bushes. When they came back we jumped out and fined them a fine.”
“Did they pay?”
“No way. One geezer got on his mobile. Delingbole was round like a shot.”
“And where were you?”
“Back in the bushes. He didn’t catch us that day. It was a good idea, but it caused a description of us to be made and put in the local paper.
“But you’re not. I wouldn’t call you distinctive.”
“You didn’t see the hat I had in those days.”
“No. That’s true.”
“By the time I came round your place, I’d got a different hat. I was down on the building site, sometimes they give us tea. I said to this Paddy, look mate, can I have your hat? Because it’s been in the paper about mine. He says, sure, I says, I’ll buy it off you, he says, no, you’re all right, I’ve another one at home, a yellow one. So when I came for mowing your garden, I said to your friend, does this hat make me look like a brickie? Because it belonged to a brickie. And she said, I’d take you for a brickie anywhere.”
“So you’ve met Colette,” Alison said. “I see. You’re the bloke from the gardening service.”
“Yes.” Mart gnawed his lip. “And that was another job that didn’t last. How about some more tea?”
Alison hurried back across the garden. Michelle’s kids were home from their nursery; she could hear their wailing, and the air was loud with their mother’s threats and curses. She brought out another flask, with a mug for herself, and a packet of Chocolate Digestives, which Colette allowed her to keep for nervous clients, who liked to crumble and nibble. This time she made sure she got some; she held the packet on her lap, and offered them to Mart one by one. “Missus,” he said, “have you ever been described in the paper?”
She said, “I have, actually. In the
“You were lucky,” Mart said. “Windsor, you see. That’s outside Delingbole’s area.”
“I’ve never had any time for the police,” she said. I suppose I should have called them, when I was a kid. I
