`Girlfriend?'
A very brief hesitation while Bernadette bent to scratch her foot. `No.'
Any friends?'
`No.'
`Does he work at all?'
`Not officially, no.' It was like a litany of negatives from which William emerged as blank as sky. The telling of it filled Bernadette with guilt.
`Well, what does he do in the evenings?' Amanda asked.
Mrs Featherstone rose in fury. 'Sits in the kitchen, sits in the garden, hangs around. Even talks sometimes. Helps me. Sits in his room and wanks, probably. Maybe he dreams of you, Miss fucking Scott. Harold!' she bawled again in the direction of the bar. 'Come here.
There was a moment's silence, a heavy footfall, and Amanda felt the first trace of alarm. She was not proofed for insult from shabby, crabby Bernadette. She rose to her feet tight-lipped, Bailey's words in her ears: 'Always give up an interview if it seems entirely counterproductive. If they won't tell you, they won't. Wait for another time.' Amanda was content to wait for ever and to get out while the going was merely bad, preferably before the footfalls reached her vulnerable back. She moved, too late and too awkwardly.
Ah,' said Harold behind her neck. 'It's Mr Bailey's moll. The pretty policeman. How are you, Moll?' And before she could turn, he wrapped his large, thick arms around her waist, wrists locked in embrace, his mouth in her ear. 'How are you, Moll?' he repeated softly, dangerously, but laughing, his breath whisky-laden, his skin damp and stale. 'Leave off our boy, Moll. Or we'll set him on you.'
She pulled at the wrists in sickening panic, tearing them apart, grabbed her bag, crashed against the table en route to the open back door. William's jewellery fell to the floor; she heard it clatter on the broken quarry tiles, and for a reason she did not fathom she bent and recovered the bracelet, slipped it into her bag as she ran for the daylight, slowed herself to a galloping walk, remembering dignity too late. Soon enough to turn and smile back sweetly, more for her own sake than theirs. 'You've been very helpful. Thank you.' Sarcasm in each syllable, hating the last glimpse of two laughing faces.
Rubbing her neck where Harold had touched her, feeling diseased.
Uncharacteristically close to tears, pushing through bushes, she walked downhill on a slippery path, spitting into the shrubs at the side like an angry cat. Then stood still, momentarily lost in the garden.
The straightest route to the car was the way she had come, through the kitchen, the bar, and the front door, but she could no more re-enter that furnace than she could fly over the moon. She paused, looking and listening. No choices as she drew breath and calmed herself.
Walk to the bottom of this dark, disgusting garden, get through to the field somehow, walk back up the side of it to the road and the front of the pub. In common with most of her fellow emigres to these country zones, Amanda believed in sanitized country life, disliked muddy shoes, brambles, and the slime of ill-controlled nature. The shrubs visible at the end of the path over a fallen tree held little appeal for exploration, but torn tights and a pulled skirt were infinitely preferable to the alternatives.
Swearing silently, she persisted down the path, branches spitefully teasing her face, and came on the summerhouse by surprise, and stopped.
Christ. The shed was as mad as the couple in the hotel. No doubt a Featherstone project, with that drunken look, half done and then abandoned, like the kitchen. She was not interested or even disposed to look – the whole family could roast in hell, the sooner the better – but in passing silently she peeped into one of the windows, frightened but drawn.
Through the damp grime on the glass, she could see a dim light, hear sounds of hammering subdued by earth as if coming from a great distance. From a hole in the floor, momentarily blocking the light, a head and bare shoulders, pale in the glow, rose away from her. Perhaps a Featherstone, perhaps an intruder, perhaps big William tunnelling out of the ground like a giant slug. Amanda could imagine white-skinned William, vacuous image of his father, an undressed grinning version of the lout she had met in court, but naked and rampant, lumbering towards her, a vision that was entirely in her mind, since only his back was visible.
While she watched he remained terrifyingly still. She ran from the window, pushed through the shrubs, climbed a fence into the barleyfield, and thrashed her way uphill to the safety of her car. She drove well beyond view of The Crown before stopping, dusting down her muddy skirt, cleaning her shoes with tissue and grass, no longer trembling, feeling utterly foolish and simply angry.
Remembering now, looking at the mud on her skirt, Amanda decided on a weak gin and tonic, normally reserved for guests, to make it look as if she tried. The problem with the mortgage race was that it left over so little money for self-indulgence of this or any kind. She drank in tiny sips with relish, forgetting the humiliation as she crunched the ice. She had to get on, whatever it cost, and never mind the drawbacks. A job was a job and this was a good job, a passport. Featherstones or not.
She had come a long way from the back streets of north London, and she was not going back. And as for her visit to The Crown, she would tell Bailey all she had learned about William, but not quite how the learning had happened.
`You did well, girl. Really you did. Saw her off nicely. I was listening at you, you know, before I added my three penn'orth.'
Bernadette was lighting the fortieth cigarette of the day. `Thought you might be,' she said.
'Harold, what are we going to do?'
She put her head in her arms briefly. He moved to her side of the kitchen table, hugged her quickly. Harold was sober and trade was dead at ten o'clock. Amanda Scott's afternoon visit had raised a brief laugh, but dispelled the taste for whisky.
`What are we going to do, Harold?' she repeated.
He slumped into the chair beside her, hating emotional scenes of the noncombative kind as much as he hated responsibility, suspecting most of the fighting was the result of his evasion of his duty.
`Do about what? The pub?'
Oh, Harold, face up for once. Never mind the bloody pub. I mean William. Our son, William. I don't even know where he is.' She had a fair idea he might have been somewhere at the other end of the garden, and she was relying on the end of summer to bring him back, but even in this extremity she was not going to say. She knew Harold's limitations as well as his temper, felt she had betrayed William enough already for one day – she had even lost the bracelet she treasured, given her as reject gift from the pile of his creations, but still a gift.
`Well, what can we do?' asked Harold, mildly belligerent. 'Why should we anyway?
All right, he pinched some trinkets. I've paid the fine, given him more pocket money, and that's that. He's not done anything serious.'
`Hasn't he?' asked Bernadette. 'Hasn't he, now? I wonder.'
`Like what do you wonder?' Irritation, a self-defensive and guilty anger, as well as a plea for forgiveness rose in his throat.
Oh, I don't know, Harold. He's so empty. I keep thinking of that body in the woods, that's what I keep thinking. I don't like it, Harold. Don't know what to do.'
`There's a man in prison for the body in the woods,' Harold almost shouted. 'Stop thinking, Bernie. You're not good at it, honest you're not. And what the hell can we do anyway? If you stroke him he bites. If you pat him he scratches. Interfere now and we'll only provoke him. He's fine, Bernie, just fine. Look at him, always smiling.'
She was too tired for conflict. It was the story of her life, this incessant fatigue kept at bay by quarrelling. Better do as Harold did, simply avoid it and hope for the best.
If he gets worse, pet, we'll take him away.'
She turned to him with mild and hopeful enquiry. 'Where, Harold? Back to London where no one would know us? Suit me fine. I'm sick of it here. It's like living with a whole load of cuckoos feathering their nest. Just like we do. If we hadn't worked so hard, and I might add for so little, we might have had a better son.'
He sighed dramatically. 'We'd be lost in London, Bernie. Wouldn't own a thing.'
`That's exactly why I'd like it, Harold. So would William.'
Harold hesitated, hating both the forward and backward trends of the conversation. 'You don't really think he's done anything more than thieving, do you, Bernie?'
