One of the local rags has interviewed her. She is deeply concerned about local policing. This whole episode has been a dreadful ordeal for her. She’d never intended harm to anyone, had never done so in her entire life, but she no longer felt safe in her own home where she had lived for more than forty years. And there was her smug face staring out from the page, a large photograph, those insulting eyes all bloated with certainty.
Pedro and Barry. Keyvan. Shiv. Els. What was her name, Polly. Others.
‘Why do people keep on publishing her? If they just all stopped printing her letters she’d stop writing them.’
‘It’s not about the letters. Talk about violence, what’s that if it’s not violence? It’s assault, straight up. I mean if that was anybody else.’ Disgusted, Barry the ferret, tossing the paper over to someone else.
The pamphlet had just gone out and Shiv was a bit worried. ‘You know,’ she said, rolling tobacco in the saggy red sofa, ‘you shouldn’t really print a picture of her house. What if someone throws a fucking bomb through her window or something?’
‘We had to put this out,’ Maurice proudly held up his pamphlet as if he was being photographed for an award. ‘Letters are one thing, but this here what she’s done is bodily harm leading to death. I mean, that is extreme. Anyway, we didn’t identify the house—’
‘Oh come on,’ said Shiv, ‘people will know.’
‘—and I mean, even if we had, it’s not exactly a secret, is it? Everyone knows she lives there. For fuck sake, she even puts the name of the street on some of her letters, I’m sure she does – oh no no, not at all, put out the word, she wants attention, she can have it.’
‘Can’t say I’d cry an awful lot.’ Els. Arched eyebrows, standing up and soaring over everyone else. Always felt like a Munchkin next to her.
‘Won’t make a difference anyway.’ Johnny appeared to be in pain. ‘It’ll all be forgotten next week.’
Phoebe Twist was becoming Johnny’s obsession.
‘Serve the old cow right,’ said Barry.
‘Not a bomb.’ Keyvan, striding about like he did, jumping on and off the furniture as if he had worms. ‘Dogshit yeah. Through the letterbox. Dogshit I’m OK with. Not a bomb though.’
‘You know what?’ said Johnny coolly. ‘I wouldn’t give a fuck.’
‘Yes, you would.’ That was me.
‘It wouldn’t be murder, it would be assassination.’
‘Cut it out.’ Maurice swung his legs up onto the desk, crossing them at the ankle and lying back in his swivel chair. The soles of his Doc Martens were splodged with wads of grey chewing gum. ‘You want to go and join Barry’s lot if that’s how you feel. It’s not for here.’
Barry the ferret laughed. He was only moonlighting here.
‘You see that?’ said Keyvan. ‘A parasitical underbelly.’
‘And what does that sound like?’ Pedro got up to change the music.
‘That’s horrible.’
‘It’s all horrible. There is so much horribleness out there. This whole world is fucked up.’
‘Vermin,’ said what’s her name Polly. I can’t even remember what she looked like. Her head bowed as she buttoned herself up to the chin. ‘That’s all they are to them.’
‘See anyone else getting away with it.’
Shiv agreed, thumbing her lighter. ‘Say it was anyone like us,’ she said. ‘I still say ignore her. Even this,’ waving another copy of the pamphlet, ‘you’re just giving her more publicity. Ignore. Treat with contempt.’
In truth, the people of Hatchet were more into good works and rhetoric than throwing the little streets upon the great. Mostly.
Maurice sat forward and put a hand on Johnny’s arm – strangely, I thought, an awkward moment, and Johnny flinched away.
‘Yes, I’m angry,’ he said, ‘I’m fucking furious. So should everyone be.’
‘You’re emotional,’ Maurice said, ‘that’s not the same. I’m actually probably much more angry than you are, but I’m not as emotional.’
The way Johnny simmered, taking it as a rebuke. God forbid the master should disapprove. I could kick him. Yes, Maurice. No, Maurice. Do you think so, Maurice? You know, I said once, you’re allowed to disagree with him. I know! he said angrily, and his anger was so cold. But the smallest thing, he gets mortified. Maurice has a 2:1 from Exeter and Johnny dropped out of Somewhere-or-other. Who cares? He did, for all that he said school was a load of crap and we should have home-schooled Lily, we should be home-schooling Harriet. Fine, but he wouldn’t do it. Churning out units, he said. Where was the aspiration? The pursuit of greatness unbeholden to the leaden hammering in of Gradgrind facts? Teacher, leave them kids alone, hey teacher – leave them kids alone! They’re brainwashing you in the womb, he said, by the time you’re born you’re already fucked. Born into slavery. No choice.
Off they go then about regressive tolerance, a sedate duel.
‘We should go,’ I said. We were picking up Lily and Harry from Wilf’s.
The traffic was awful, the sky like lumpy potatoes.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
Of course he wasn’t.
‘You know,’ he stared moodily into the traffic ahead, ‘nothing’s going to happen. Not a thing. All this deadline stuff, all this talk, all this must publish stuff, it all means nothing. Futile. All of it. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing ever does.’
‘What do you want to happen?’ I said.
Our voices were carefully expressionless, and the moment was peculiar and loaded for no discernible reason. He was quiet for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he said, ‘I want her treated like everyone else, that’s all. I want her arrested and tried in a court of law.’
I looked away into the traffic and remembered that moment in the shop when I’d seen Phoebe Twist by the frozen foods and looked into her nasty cold eyes, and I wondered if I could shoot
