Vince’s dad was spending his morning off in the garage, applying Turtle Wax to his already gleaming Triumph Herald and thinking out his life.
But I’ve missed something. Something in particular that happened yesterday. Vince came in late last night. He thought I was asleep, but he woke me. I watched him looking at me, turning off the fire. Where was his friend, that Andy bloke? The night before last he was happy enough to see him. Oh, he tried to hide it, but I could tell. I’m not his dad for nowt.
Cliff Richard on the wireless, the tang of wax in the air. It was brilliantly sunny outside, drying everything out. He was in a cheerful mood. Cheerful enough to ponder.
Will I ask him what’s up? He’ll bite my head off. He can be snappy when he likes. But I should show willing. I saw he had that poster up. I was right after all. But I’m glad.
I wonder what they were up to yesterday. His shoes were left kicked across the kitchen floor, and they were thick with mud. Like he’d been down the Burn. He’ll have pneumonia. I will ask.
Gone were the days of not asking questions. That was the sure-fire way of letting things pass you by. That was how his wife had gone. When he thought back, it was to very few memories of her. Apart from those in the late fifties, early sixties, when she dressed as a ted to be with him. Once she stopped being with him and stayed at home instead, he had taken less notice.
One memory: she smashed all his records before leaving, in 1977. He was left to throw the pieces out. Thick records, heavy as smashed china. He pinned the empty sleeves to the walls. He felt allowed to do that, with the house suddenly his and his alone.
I’ll ask Vince what the matter is. Openness and all that. I’ve missed too much, I think.
Rose stepped out into the sunshine, dolled up and ready for the cameras. It was like the postcard business all over again. She was ready for her public. ‘This appalling affair… such a nice girl… my daughter knew her very well…’ Ethan was waiting at the corner of the street.
‘Hello,’ he said, tottering towards her. ‘Am I allowed to speak to you?’
Rose was a vision in pink, her personal space scented with Poison. Ethan was damp and filthy. He had spent much of the night hobbling the streets. He sneezed.
‘You stupid old bastard!’ she cried, seizing his arm. ‘Where did you go last night?’ She wheeled him around, marching him firmly back to her house. The news people would just have to wait.
‘I slept on the bench by the boating lake. Our favourite spot, Rose.’
‘It might well be. But I don’t want you pegging out on it.’ She bundled him indoors and started to strip him off in the kitchen. ‘I’ll run a nice hot bath.’
‘Will you still marry me?’
With a fastidious expression, she picked at his cardigan buttons. ‘We’ll just have to see about that.’
Ethan nodded glumly.
Fran was waiting anxiously for dinnertime. Jane came round and surprised her with a Battenburg. But her appetite was gone. Phoning the police with her new information had knocked Fran sick. She could just imagine that Detective Inspector Collins’s face; her nasty puckered expression as she was told.
At ten past twelve Frank came back on his lunch break.
‘Well?’ asked Fran. Jane looked up, mouth full of cake.
‘He never came in for work this morning,’ Frank said. ‘There’s no sign.’
‘Right.’ Fran went to the phone.
‘What’s going on?’ Jane asked. The kids were complaining. They weren’t allowed to play out today.
‘Vince?’
No reply. Vince’s dad knocked on the door again.
Well, if his little friend hadn’t come back, there couldn’t be an embarrassing scene to walk into, could there? He gritted his teeth against what that last thought meant and what his next action might bring.
He pushed the door open and saw Vince sprawled naked on the mattress, fast asleep. He was lying on his back with his mouth open. The room was brilliant with light.
How can he still be sleeping on a day like this?
With a kind of morbid fascination his father stared at the prone body. Finding out what Vince was had made him different. He wasn’t just a son any more. He was, in a sense, the enemy; they were no longer on the same side. For a second or two, a part of the older man’s mind was weighing up the enemy.
His body is like his mother’s, was the thought that emerged. Long-limbed, pale-skinned; a light dusting of auburn hair. His penis was large, nestling against one leg, different to his dad’s. He doesn’t take after me at all. He’s bigger than me, even there. I’d never noticed. How could I? So private. So different.
‘Vince,’ he said. ‘Vince!’ He became irritated, went to shake him.
The flesh was cool. Pale and cool, too much like marble. His dad froze, noticing the bottle by the mattress. Not pills, that would be too corny for Vince. But it happens. Vince’s dad remembered Marilyn; where he was and what he was doing when the news came through. He looked at the bottle’s label, scared to read. It was handwritten.
‘Ethan Nesbit’s Special Embalming Fluid.’
Pulling his son into a sitting position, he tried to force his fingers into his mouth. The body remained still, but a sickly groan, a belch, fought past his fingers. The heart was still beating. ‘Vince, what was that stuff? Is it fatal? What?’
The eyes opened and looked at him coldly. ‘Hospital?’ Vince asked and passed out again.
His dad picked him up in an expert fireman’s lift and struggled with the suddenly massively heavy body. Vince’s soft
