‘What’s been going on here, then?’ rumbled the taxidermist.
The boy in the silk dressing gown gave him a shrug.
‘We got stuffed.’
That morning, to make herself feel better, Jane threw open the washing machine and rammed in armfuls of dirty washing.
Already she felt guilty for her big night out. I’m not being a proper mother, she thought, as the engine throbbed and the first wave of escaped water began to spread across the lino. It was a thought brought on from the outside: I’m not doing my duty. It pressed like a cold flannel against her temples as she sat with the day’s first cup of tea. The regular thud from the machine’s motor kept pace with the pounding in her head. Like penance. She found she was staring at her Kevin Costner calendar as though it was the most interesting thing in the world.
Very soon she would have to walk across town to fetch Peter. Life would begin again in its old pattern. She could hardly wait. Her current novel waited face down on the table, split in thick halves, demanding attention. The insistent pulse of her daily routine itched on her skin, calling out, wanting to pull her from this inactivity, quell the depression.
Soon, subdued by the routine, she would be able to fall back into her book and find out what an awful time her characters were having. She thought of them like that — as her characters. She hadn’t created them, but they had been given to her, to read about, to live among for a little while. On Tyneside they lived in the shadow of the docks in the days when there still were docks — days Jane imagined as always dark, morning, noon and night.
She hefted the rubbish from its plastic bin, opened the kitchen door and waded with it into the back garden. Getting rid of rubbish also made her feel better at times like this.
How many times like this had she seen? Quite a few, and it never stopped seeming that the nights she spent not caring, smashed out of her head, took place on another planet. A planet where her usual life was something to laugh at, something so narrow and silly it was incredibly funny. On nights like those it was all so difficult to believe. Everything became a mockery. Even time.
Especially time. Time was her enemy. It took so long. She threw grappling hooks at the future, one after another, hooking them on to significant events (Peter’s holidays from playgroup, a night out, a clothes party, Christmas, Peter’s birthday) and she would haul herself towards them. Often she would sit in the kitchen, finding herself counting minutes down from sixty in an effort to annihilate the time between now and then in interminable, easy calculations.
Nights like last night made all that into a joke. Those nights out flew by. They took all her counting, her scrimping and saving and pissed on them. Money was like time in that it was spread thinly out, taut through her waking moments. Then it snapped back like elastic when she got drunk. Time and money both vanish, she thought, when you catch a taxi home.
She thought again about what that taxi fare would have bought, what it might have been important for. She had to decide that it was a different sort of money. The money was a casualty of one of those nights. It didn’t count.
Jane shuddered and pressed the rubbish down, shoulder-deep, in her new council wheely bin. They wouldn’t take it if it wasn’t pressed right down. They made you buy your own plastic bags now, as well.
She straightened to see a tall figure in a dark coat scooting across the road. It was hurrying away from the block of flats at the end of Phoenix Court. Jane’s eyes narrowed at the sight of carefully teased, bleached blonde hair, the slash of gold beneath the calf-length man’s greatcoat. Jane opened her mouth to call out, but Liz had vanished, ducking into her own garden. Jane went back inside.
This was something out of the ordinary, at least.
It would do for later. Right now she wanted the ordinary. She went to have a bath, spurred on by the enthusiasm of the washing machine.
While Andy sat the old taxidermist down in the back kitchen and saw to some tea, Vince trudged upstairs again. He decided he really had to get back into school. His first lesson of the day was at one fifteen. As far as they were concerned he was still full of germs, but he felt he was letting things slip. And now he had to go walking in with his puffy face and his purple patches of flesh. Let them talk, though. Obviously he was already getting on Andy’s nerves.
The heads on the staircase walls studiously ignored him as he came back down clutching shoes and coat. He hovered halfway, listening to the voices in the kitchen. The Axminster drew his attention and he stayed there, fascinated. He could never resist eavesdropping. In the voice of the old man downstairs there was a power that unnerved him. But as he boomed out staccato sentences in that tiny kitchen, it was not without a certain tenderness. Through every word he said he sounded sorry. Vince wondered what bad news was coming Andy’s way.
‘Of course I don’t mind you having friends to stay. I think it’s healthy.’ Table legs scraped on the stone floor. Vince imagined them sitting awkwardly at the scarred Formica, balancing their mugs. Then he thought. Shit, it was probably the poor old bastard’s leg scraping the floor. Thoughts of physical pain, illness or debilitation always gave Vince the willies. His stomach folded in on itself with a roll of empathy.
‘What’s the visit in aid of, then?’ Andy was being quite rude. This bloke did own the place, after all.
‘Are you sure you oughtn’t phone the police?’
‘Quite sure. They can’t do anything.’
‘All
