Last Train to Gloryhole (24 page)

‘I know her!’ Victoria yelled back at him, pointing a trembling finger at the oscillating, singing face of Carla Steel.

‘Course you do. She sang at your funeral,’ Steffan replied, approaching the window at speed, and slamming it shut in the woman’s face. Laughing aloud, he quickly returned to the computer and, grasping the mouse in his hand, minimised the video, and so revealed the web-page that lay beneath it. To Anne’s straining eyes, it appeared to display the interior of someone’s kitchen, inside which an armoury of guns and knives were laid out on a table. The two youths passed a second joint between them as they scribbled down information in a note-pad that they had laid open before them, presumably about the weapons that were on display.

The calling-bell sounded for a third time, accompanied by a frantic curse from a bed-ridden gentlemen in a bedroom nearby, and so Anne quietly pulled the door of the room closed, and, turning about, dashed off to see what it was that was troubling the old man.

‘I’m sure I’ve got a screw loose, you know,’ Tom announced, standing under the frame of the open back-door of his
Gloryhole
home.

‘You didn’t have to tell me that, Dad. I’ve always known,’ replied Carla, with a smile.

The old man looked inside to where his daughter stood with her back to him, working at the bread-board. ‘I’m talking about these sun-glasses, Carla,’ he told her. There’s no need to be so cheeky to your father, is there? It’s this right arm, this shaky one here. It seems to be about to come off in my hand.’

‘What’s about to come off in your hand, Dad?’ she asked him, then giggling quietly to herself at the crudity of the words she had used, and which she knew her father would never comprehend, as she laid the ham-slices on the buttered bread, and carefully folded each alternate slice on top.

‘These old tinted specs I’ve got,’ he replied. ‘Why? What do you think I was talking about? Eh? You know you seem to have learned an awful lot since you’ve been up in that - that London, my girl. Much of it disgusting if you ask me.’

‘Then perhaps
I won’t
ask you,’ she replied, spinning round with two plates full of sandwiches in her hands, and a cheeky grin on her face. ‘You know, Dad, I wouldn’t be surprised to find you think that some my song-lyrics are disgusting too, right? Do you, Dad? Tell me - do you?’

‘I wouldn’t really know,’ he responded, taking one of the plates from her, and shuffling along in his carpet-slippers towards the iron table in the far corner of the garden-patio, where his daughter had suggested they could sit and enjoy the day’s brunch together. ‘I find I don’t seem to have much time to listen to music.’

‘Really? Not even mine?’ Carla enquired from behind him, affecting a bruised ego. She walked over and joined her father at the table and sat down beside him. ‘You’ve got all the time in the world these days, Dad. When the police leave you alone, I mean. You could do all sorts of things now that you’re retired and have got a nice, brand-new home to live in. You could learn to cook properly for a start, or you could try painting some water-colours, or writing your memoirs, even.’ The look of disgust that Tom instantly shot back at her still couldn’t deter her from saying more. ‘I know you’ve got a whole host of things you’ve done in your life that you must want to tell people about you know. For instance that story I recall you telling me as a child, about - about the little girl from Aberfan. I always remember that one, Dad, although I admit the precise details escape me.’

‘What girl?’ her father asked, staring angrily at her, and clearly regretting her having brought up the subject.

‘Well, I never knew her name, did I?’ replied Carla. ‘I remember you always kept that to yourself. Don’t go denying it now. And then there was that murder in America you helped their police solve, and without even going out of the country. How come you managed to do that?’

‘Well, I didn’t have a valid passport any longer, did I?’ he replied. ‘I’d have loved to have gone to the United States. Your Aunt Sally lives over there, you know. In Detroit, she lives. Gosh, I haven’t seen her since I was around twenty-one.’

‘Well, I have,’ Carla whispered in response.

‘What was that you said?’ he enquired, biting carefully, but a tad painfully, into his sandwich.

‘Aw, nothing,’ she replied. ‘I - I did a concert in Detroit last year, you know. Perhaps - perhaps I should have invited her along, or something.’

‘Oh, I doubt she would have gone, my love,’ he told her. ‘Sally was always such a grumpy old bugger at the best of times, and especially so after her Chesney died. And, as I recall, she can’t hear any more, either, so it’s probably a good thing you never did.’

Carla chuckled to herself, recalling, as if it were yesterday, the embarrassing row she had had in the ‘green room’ after the Detroit concert with her two female American cousins, who, it seemed, wanted to make a not inconsiderable sum of money from a pre-arranged magazine-interview they had set up for her the following day, and which carefully conceived plan Carla had knocked on the head as soon as she heard about it. But they weren’t really family, anyway, Carla told herself. Family don’t exploit each other like that, do they? Well, her father had never wanted to, anyway, and he was just about the only family she seemed to have left.

‘Listen to this, Dad,’ Carla told him, picking up the daily paper from the table, and reading a small headline that was inside it. ‘Man escapes prison when wife sends fax ordering his release.’ Now don’t you think that’s amazing?’

‘What’s a fax?’ Tom asked her, suddenly coughing harshly, and spilling crumbs all down the front of his cardigan.

Carla stared at him and shook her head from side to side. She could understand her dad not knowing about texts and tweets and the like, but faxes! Wow - that was right out of the blue. She truly pitied her father so, but she realised that it was far too late to think about teaching this old dog any new tricks. There again, Carla thought, she still could throw a ball or two for him to catch, even now. ‘Dad,’ she began, ‘you must have heard people saying - ‘Get your facts straight, yeah? You must have.’

‘Well, I dare say,’ he responded, wiping himself down with his handkerchief. ‘Get your facts straight. Aye.’

‘Well, what it really means is - it means - you should straighten out the fax-machine.’

Tom stared across at his daughter. ‘In case it falls off the table, like?’ he asked, sipping his tea. He smiled at her. He fully realised his daughter was teasing him now, and yet he was so glad she was there for him at long last that he simply didn’t care how much she exploited him.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ she told him. Carla smiled at the joke that she was convinced she had just played on him, then looked about her, at the rural scene over the fence, the little garden, the trees that surrounded it, and then at her wonderful father sitting contentedly before her. At this she felt a leap of joy in her very soul. ‘You know I love you so much, Dad,’ Carla told him slowly.

‘I know, sweet,’ Tom replied, a tear welling up in the corner of his eye, and another, more raucous cough than the first - a quite scary one this time - beginning to rise up in his swollen throat. ‘But, you know, like I’ve been telling you lately, girl, love is all about letting go.’

In the last lesson of the day Drew walked around his classroom watching a dozen or so young children standing to do their work at different tables. They were all fully engrossed, happily engaged in printing large letters of their choice onto plain, white t-shirts.

A boy called Grant was talking to another boy called Dafydd. ‘A pair of specs walks into a bar,’ he told him, ‘and the landlord says, ‘Get out of here - you’re off your face!’ ’

‘I don’t get it,’ replied Dafydd, ‘nor that one you said about the little horse with the long face.’

‘Smiling to himself, Drew approached the table to view the two boys’ work. ‘Oh, you’ve gone and written it wrong again, Dafydd,’ he told the smaller one. ‘Couldn’t you see that?’

‘How do you mean?’ asked a bemused Dafydd, looking up anxiously into his teacher’s face.

‘Well, you see the company’s spelt F - C - U - K, not - not the way that you have just printed it.’ Drew grinned. ‘You won’t be able to wear that around school, I’m afraid, my old mate.’

‘Damn!’ shrieked Dafydd angrily, stamping his foot on the floor and clearly hurting himself in the process. ‘I’m sorry, Sir,’ he added.

‘It’s O.K.,’ Drew told him fondly.

‘Dafydd is such a silly
c-nut
sometimes, isn’t he, Sir?’ said Grant, barely able to contain himself.

A group of girls at the next table began laughing at Dafydd’s mistake, one especially loud girl crudely calling him ‘a cock.’

‘Excuse me, Hannah Jeffries!’ Drew bellowed at her. ‘Nobody hearing you would ever know that you lived in a vicarage, now would they?’

‘No, Sir,’ the girl replied, flushing up, and printing away. ‘My parents would, though,’ she added. Her friend leaned over and laughed with her at this seemingly clever riposte.

‘Yeah, they came to see you once, didn’t they?’ called out Dafydd from the sink, where he now stood spreading out his shirt, and desperately trying to clean up the mistake he had made.

‘Shut up - you!’ Hannah screamed back at him. ‘At least I can spell ‘fuck,’ you pillock. Oops! Sorry, Sir. Honest, I am.’

Suddenly a much older boy, who was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, walked into the room, and hurried away into the store-room that branched off it. Drew watched him arrive, considered for a moment what his sudden arrival might mean, then surreptitiously approached the half-closed door of his art-store, and peered inside. Drew could see the lanky boy, whose name was Jake, deep within the dark room, standing on a chair, and reaching up to collect a small bag from a high shelf above his head, and then swiftly stashing it inside the neck of his shirt. As Jake regained the floor and turned to leave, Drew squared-up to him and spoke.

‘Shouldn’t you be on work-experience, Jake?’ he asked him. ‘You and Steffan are at
The Willows
care-home, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, I just came back to get a few - a few paints,’ the boy replied. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Those old fogies are just mad for it, you know. Painting, I mean.’

‘Paints, yeah?’ Drew asked him, thinking fast. ‘All colours, or - or just
green
?’ The two males stood and stared at each other.

‘Yeah, just green,’ Jake announced, with a forced smile.

Suddenly Jake’s side-kick Steffan walked into the room, and, seeing his friend confronted, spun round and stood beside him.

‘I’m not stupid, you know,’ Drew added. ‘Say, can I ask you boys something?

‘’Course, you can,’ Steffan replied on their behalf.

‘Where are you growing it?’

‘Where!’ Steffan replied, grinning. ‘You’re asking
me
! Moi? Look, I think you need to ask the right guy that question, don’t you?’

‘Jake?’ asked the teacher, turning and regarding his much taller, but thinner companion.

‘Jake!’ shrieked Steffan. ‘Not Jake, for God’s sake. No - Chris! Ask him, why don’t you?’

‘Chris! My Chris?’ stammered Drew, clearly flustered. ‘Look - he might have done it at one time a while back, but - but I checked out the loft just the other day, and it’s completely empty. And I know there’s nowhere else it could possibly be. So - so I really don’t believe my son can be involved in any of this.’

‘No? Really?’ sneered Steffan. ‘But he’s
not
your son, is he?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Drew.

‘We mean he’s somebody else’s son really, isn’t he?’ Jake cut in.

‘And we found out who,’ added Steffan, with a smile. ‘Sorry, Drew, old boy. Drew-the-Art!’

‘Drew-the-Pictures!’ chimed in Jake, sniggering in unison with his partner-in-crime.

‘Look - you two get out of here right now!’ a livid Drew commanded, shifting his frame to stand alongside the, now open, door.

The two boys swaggered out into the classroom and grinned vindictively at many of the young, uniformed children, who were plainly concerned by their unexpected, and noisy, arrival.

Steffan suddenly spilled over a pot of coloured water that stood on a table-top. ‘Oh, sorry about that, Mr. Cillick, Sir,’ he said. ‘We’d stay and clean it up, but, you see we’ve got a great deal to do -’

‘A
great
deal, as it happens,’ cut in Jake, giggling.

‘Yeah, a really brilliant deal,’ added Steffan, grinning.’ By now the two boys were falling about laughing, arms around each other’s shoulders.

‘Look - when he gets back on his feet I won’t have you messing up his life for him, you know,’ the teacher told them.

‘Your step-son?’ said Jake, now as anxious to address the whole class, who were his captive audience, as the red-faced man he glared at.

‘Yes, my step-son,’ Drew answered. ‘My boy Chris. I won’t have you ruining
his
life. I’m telling you that straight.’

‘I think he’s telling us straight, Jake,’ said Steffan, grinning again. ‘What a mug, eh? But it’s ruined already, isn’t it, Drew? In fact, his life’s been messed-up for ages now, old boy. And you know you’re caught right up in it, too, Drew baby. Yes, yes, old man. Believe me, you are.’

‘He’s called Mr. Cillick,’ little Dafydd suddenly called to them from across the room.

‘Shut up, dick-head!’ Steffan screamed, staring the young boy down.

‘Anyway, this is all above your head, teacher,’ announced Jake, beginning to smile at Drew.

‘Way above - you get me?’ added Steffan, chuckling maliciously, and pointing at him derisively.

‘Do you mean it’s - it’s growing above the roof?’ enquired Drew, more confused than ever now. ‘But how can that be?’

‘Only thing you can grow on a roof is mould,’ little Dafydd told them all, with a smile.

‘The dick-head’s right, for once,’ Steffan told everyone, spinning round to face them. ‘And so - and so he wins a prize.’

‘A prize!’ repeated Dafydd excitedly. ‘What prize? What? What do I get?’

Steffan suddenly walked across to him and tipped a jar of black water all over the boy’s newly-printed, white T-shirt. ‘You like water-colours, yeah?’ the older boy asked him with a venomous look on his face that was pure malice.