December (36 page)

      
Oh God. Shelley closed her eyes on Tom's disbelief.

      
'Why you fink I should wanna talk to you?'

      
'Because, Tom, to be blunt,' Case said, 'I've got the Abbey
tapes. I'd like to know more about them and you'd probably like to know how I
got hold of them.'

      
'I don't give a shit.'

      
'I think you do.'

      
'Yeah? Keys, Shelley.'

      
'You should come and talk to Sile Copesake. He's listened to
the tapes. He says he ...'

      
Shelley opened her eyes at precisely the moment that Tom hit
Stephen Case open-handed in the face, tipping him backwards like a bottle from
a shelf. She saw Martin Broadbank step hurriedly out of the way as Case crashed
into a coffee table, bouncing a black patent-leather shoulder bag into the air.
      
Tom caught the bag.

      
He turned it upside down, and Case, struggling to sit up, was showered
with sundry items of make-up. Also, a comb, a hairbrush, a notebook, a pocket
calculator and a bunch of car keys.

      
Tom snatched the keys from Case's left armpit.

      
'Tom, no!' Shelley shrieked.
'Please!
'

      
'Leave him,' Martin Broadbank said. As if he had the slightest
idea what was happening.

      
Tom lumbered through the drawing-room, as unresponsive as an
amateur stage ghost on the battlements. Above his left shoulder, Shelley
thought she could discern a dusty something, like a floating bruise.

      
There was such a silence in the room that when the car started
up outside it was like an explosion in the night.

XV

Bunny

Vanessa being glued to
Eddie Murphy - for the second time around - left the Weasel time to do a bit of
thinking.
      
He wondered, was tonight going to
be the big turning-point for Tom, going out into the big world and that?
      
And, nah, he couldn't see it at
all.

      
Weasel contemplated this sitting-room with the big telly and
the tasteful Laura Ashley drapes and the furniture which must have cost a bomb
but wasn't what you could call an investment on account of it was all repro -
imitation Chippendale and Sherrington and geezers of that order, tomorrow's
junk.

      
Shelley doing her best, given that she wasn't allowed to have
anything in the house that wasn't showroom-fresh, in case there was anything,
like,
attached
to it.

      
Weasel had heard it said that kids that grew up where
everything they came into contact with was sterilized and disinfected - these
kids was
more likely
to pick up bugs
and that when they went out, because their bodies hadn't built up any kind of
natural immunity.

      
Well, God knows, it didn't start out like that for Tom, not in
any respect, growing up in Bermondsey: pies and chips from the shop every night
on account of his old lady being on shifts down the biscuit factory and his dad
staggering home about eleven, stinking of oil from the docks and fags and beer
from the boozer, and all their furniture secondhand, including the beds and the
old telly, when they eventually got one.

      
Those days, Tom was a healthy kid and seemed happy -
especially the night his old man come home with the guitar.
      
Weasel chuckled. The size of the
bastard!

      
Those days - Elvis, Tommy Steele - all the kids wanted
guitars. Those who got one, it was usually some four-quid Spanish effort and
they'd attach a bit of old lamp-flex to the
back to make like it was electric.

      
Christmases and birthdays had been and gone and Tom'd given up
hope. Youngest of seven, all his clobber hand-me-downs, he'd been stringing rubber
bands across shoe box lids with a carpenter's wooden rule shoved in the end for
the fingerboard - amazingly he could get
tunes
out of this.

      
Then this night - Tom'd be about twelve, thirteen - in comes
his old man, only half as pissed as usual, with this thing wrapped in tarpaulin
that he couldn't hardly get through the back door. Tom's in bed (Weasel got
this story years later from Tom's brother Norman) and the old man sends for
him.

      
'Give us your hexpert had vice on this, son,' he says,
affecting a posh voice like he often done when he come home from the boozer.
'Hacquired it down the Eagle. Geezer assures me it's a musical instrument but I
reckon it's a bleedin' old Hoover wiv the wheels come orf.'

      
Well, Tom never slept that night, nor the night after most likely.
For when the tarpaulin comes off, what is underneath is, like, the stuff of
dreams.

      
A few years later, you'd see George Harrison, hiding behind
this red semi-acoustic monster, the famous Gretsch Chet Atkins. Now, whether
this was or it wasn't, it certainly looked a lot like it.

      
It was knocked-off, obviously, smash and grab most likely, and
whoever nicked it'd been forced to piss off pretty smartish - you could tell
this by the flaming great crack up the back - which was how come Tom's old man
had picked it up for peanuts in the pub.

      
His ma done some screaming when she seen it. Ain't having that
bleeding great thing in my house, where's it gonna go? You'll wake up one
morning and I'll have slung it out for the dustmen, just you wait.

      
No chance. Tom sleeps with the guitar in his single bed, arms
around it like a big red Teddy bear. Nights and weekends, Tom and Weasel spends
hours repairing the axe, using tools nicked from the woodwork room at school.

      
It was probably still up there in Tom's music room, with the original
red enamel sprayed on after they'd finished rebuilding it and sanding it down
and that.

      
But Weasel's chief memory connected with this guitar was the
night he hid in the school until everybody'd gone home and then let Tom and the
guitar into the deserted building. They'd got out the headmaster's big
Ferrograph tape recorder, complete with input socket, into which they'd plugged
the guitar and ... wow! After months of playing acoustically - no hope
whatever
of buying an amp - Tom lets rip
in a big way.

      
'Turn it down!' Weasel's hissing at him, but there's no
stopping Tom now and he turns the bastard up, high as it'll go; he's playing
some old Shadows number, 'Apache', over and over again, louder and louder. And
when Weasel looks out the window - oh,
no
- the flaming schoolyard's filling up with sodding kids, dozens of the little
bastards, all bopping away.

      
Only one way this was going to end, and it did — Weasel
smuggling Tom and the guitar out of a back window and staying behind to take
the rap when the coppers and the caretaker come crashing in. Corporal punishment
being all the rage with headmasters in those days. Weasel - who stayed shtumm
about Tom despite all the threats - got his arse flogged raw next day.

      
Now, Tom never spoke of this, but he never forgot it neither,
and if Weasel had to point to one single reason why the Storeys had so readily
provided a home and job for a scruffy little ex-con, this would be it, and ...

      
Weasel's thoughts were stopped just then by the sudden silence.

      
Vanessa was sitting on this pouffe thing in front of the
telly. She had the remote control in her hand and she'd stopped the video.

      
'Daddy's coming,' Vanessa said.

      
'Blimey, Princess, you got good ears.'

      
Which she hadn't. Among Down's kids, good ears was not common.
Weasel himself - and he had got good ears - couldn't hear a thing from outside,
no car noise, nothing.

      
Vanessa jumped from the pouffe, dropping the remote control on
the carpet.

      
'Where you off to. Princess?'

      
Vanessa didn't reply and ran out of the room. Weasel still couldn't
hear a car.

      
He didn't like this. What he didn't like was the thought -
always at the back of his mind - that the kid might in some way have inherited
Tom's complaint.

      
See, Tom had six uncles and six brothers. Seventh son of a
seventh son - the drawbacks of this had been well laid down in several old
blues numbers. However, Vanessa was only the first daughter of a seventh son of
a seventh son. Which ought to be OK, right?

      
'Princess!'

      
Weasel was half-way out the door when the phone rang on the
table just inside the room, within arm's length.
      
Weasel snatched it up. 'Yeah?'
      
'Weasel?'
      
'Shelley?'

      
The tone of her voice had rocked Weasel like a heavy one from
Frank Bruno.

      
'Weasel, I don't know what to do. There's been an awful scene
and Tom ... Tom's ... he's walked out on me.'

      
'Jeez.'

      
'And he's ... Weasel, he's taken the car.'

      
'Shit,' said Weasel.

      
'I don't know what to do.'

      
Her voice was definitely shaking.

      
'Where are you?'

      
'I'm still here. Hall Farm. You …'

      
'Tom's coming back here?'

      
Daddy's coming.

      
'I don't know, Weasel. He's in a state. He's had ...
Something's happened, you know what I'm saying?'

      
'Yeah, yeah ... Somebody else there, right? Can't spell it out.
Listen, Shel, I reckon the best fing I can do is get the old van out, put Vanessa
in and come and pick you up, yeah?'

      
'I don't know ... I don't know.' Getting worked up; not like
Shelley; something climactic going down.

      
'Ten minutes, Shel, I could be there ...'

      
'But what if Tom ... ? I mean, if nobody's there when he …'

      
'How bad's he?'

      
'Pret... Pretty bad. He hit somebody.'
      
'Shit. But, look, if I come and
pick you up and he's on his way back, I'll run into him on the ...'
      
Weasel went cold; his chest went
tight.
      
'Oh, fuck,' he said.

      
Shelley was kind of hyperventilating. Cool, practical, businesslike
Shelley Love.
     
Flames crackling down
the line between them, echoes of a long-ago impact neither of them had heard.

      
'Listen,' Weasel said. 'You fink I should wait here for him?'

      
'I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what's best. I don't
want you out on the road with Tom careering about in that state. I don't want
Vanessa ...'

      
Vanessa.

      
Daddy's coming.

      
'Listen, I'll call you back,' Weasel said, doing his best to keep
the shakes out of his voice. 'Five minutes.'

      
'OK, Weasel, the number's five, five, three ... Weasel?
Weasel!
'

      
But the Weasel had hung up and was racing for the door.

Shelley stood in Martin
Broadbank's panelled hall clutching the phone to her chest.

      
'Come and sit down,' Broadbank said. 'It'll be all right.
      
These things ...'

      
'What do
you
know,'
Shelley said bitterly, 'about
these
things
?'

      
Her eyes were wet.
Just
get me get through this without anyone getting hurt
, she pleaded with the
God she'd never quite accepted.
Hurt or
... or worse
.
Get me through it. Then
we'll sort something out.

      
Realising that what she was thinking of sorting out - perhaps her
only hope for a future (
her
future,
the hell with Tom) - was some sort of separation. Just for a while.

      
Or possibly a long while; she couldn't think about this now.
Listen, I didn't mean that - the hell with
Tom. I'm just... Please...