Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain (14 page)

Oh God, no
.

Still
here
? Weren’t they all supposed to have gone home to their penthouses? How long did these bloody courses go on?

Still here, still pissed.

I’ll be seeing you… girlie
.

Bad, bad news. Jane slid into the alley which led to the Swan’s backyard. He might not even remember her, probably tried it on with a few more women since then, but it wasn’t worth the risk. She stood leaning against the wall, waiting for him to go.

Obviously
not
the time to talk to Mum. Too many negative signs.

The phone shuddered in her pocket. She eased it out of her jeans, moving further into the alley, holding it very tight to her ear.

‘I was finishing a curry,’ Eirion said. ‘Some things must never be interrupted. And, before you ask, yes, it was a vegetable curry. Not easy to obtain in this part of Cardiff.’

‘Well, that—’ Footsteps, someone grunting. ‘Irene, I’ll have to call you back.’

‘Jane—?’

‘Sorry.’

She killed the signal, edged a little further against the wall. There was a sigh and a liquid splatter. Steam and stench. G
ross
. Jane turned away and waited until it was over, expecting him to go once he’d finished, but…

Damn, damn, damn
. He was coming into the alley. Jane moved all the way into the inn yard. There was an old brick toilet block at the end, long out of use. Jane slid around the side of it, stumbling into a pile of rubble.

Only just making it in time. The kitchen door was opening. A splash of light. Jane saw Dean Wall standing in the doorway, wearing an apron. A local thug, basically, unless he’d changed since she’d been at school with him. Somehow, he’d persuaded Barry to take him on as an assistant chef, which probably meant he was responsible for sweeping the yard. Essentially, only a few years, a degree from the LSE and probably a Swiss bank account separated Dean from Cornel, who was standing on the step, one arm inside a plastic sack.

‘Tomorrow’s dinner, mate.’

Something was pushed at Dean, who went kind of
duh
, but it was crisply overlaid by Barry’s voice.

‘I’m sorry, mate.’

‘Don’t apologize, Barry. Just take it.’

‘You misunderstand. I told you once, I’m not accepting this. This is the country. There are rules.’

‘Wha—?’

‘Rules. Take it away.’

‘No,
mate
,’ Cornel said. ‘In the country, there aren’t
any
fucking rules that can’t be broken.’

‘Son, you don’t know anything about the country.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Season ends on February the first, and it’s now very nearly the end of March. That make sense to you?’

‘What?’

‘Pheasants. The rule.’

‘Did I mention pheasants?
Did I?
’

Jane saw white moonlight rippling in the black plastic of a bin liner, bulging. Cornel was holding it up with both hands, something hanging out of it.

‘It deserves to be fucking eaten,’ Cornel said. ‘By me. That make sense to
you
?’

Barry didn’t move. Cornel pulled the bin liner open at the top and held it out to him. Barry stayed in the doorway, very relaxed-looking, not touching the bag.

‘How’d you kill that? You all get together and beat it to death?’

Jane couldn’t see what it was and didn’t want to. She felt herself going tight with hate.

Cornel said, ‘You’re really not gonna—?’

‘Goodnight, son.’

Barry at his most no-shit.

‘Wha’m I s’posed to do with it?’

Almost screaming now.

‘I should put it back in your car boot, mate, and dispose of it very discreetly.’

‘You’re no fun, Barry. You’re
no fucking fun
.’

‘Actually,’ Barry said, ‘this is me at my most fun. You want to see me at my most
no
fun, you’ll leave that thing behind on these premises. You get where I’m coming from?’

There was a scary kind of deadness in Barry’s voice. Jane had heard stories about what Barry had been known to do, the odd times it had got rough in the public bar. The yard went momentarily black as the door was shut, and –
oh, shit
– the mobile started vibrating in Jane’s hip pocket. She was gripping the phone through the denim as Cornel totally lost it, started snarling at the closed door.

‘This is not over. It’s
not fucking over
!’

Just like the other night.
I just want you to know it doesn’t end here
. Only losers walked away. Limited repertoire. Tosser. Jane stayed tight between the perimeter wall and the toilet block, trying to breathe slowly in the stale-beery air, not wanting to think how Cornel might react if he found her here, witness to his humiliation. Again.

The moon showed her Cornel’s foot coming back, maybe to kick the closed door, and then it got confusing.

‘Didn’t handle that very well, did we, Cornel?’

Another voice. Someone had come into the yard from the alley.

‘Pick it up, eh?’

An ashy kind of voice. Not Barry. A bit Brummy.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ Cornel said.

‘Thought? Yow
don’t
think, Cornel, that’s the problem. Now pick it up. Take it somewhere and bury it, then go and cry yourself to sleep.’

Cornel’s voice came back, petulant.

‘Why are you
doing
this to me?’

‘Go home any time y’want, mate. No skin off my nose.’

‘You’re just a—’

A movement. Not much of one. A chuckle. Then a short cry, more shock than pain.

‘
Uhhh!
’

‘Ah, dear, dear, you’re really not ready. Didn’t see that that coming either. Not as hard as we thought, eh? Long way to go, Cornel, still a long way to go, mate.’

Jane breathed in hard, through her mouth, and the breath dragged in something gritty.

‘I’ve told you,’ Cornel said. ‘I’ll pay the extra.’

‘It’s not about money. It’s about
manhood
.’

An indrawn breath, full of rage, a scuffling, like Cornel was finding his feet. Jane tasted something disgusting, realized she was inhaling a cobweb full of dead flies.

Cornel was going, ‘You sanctimonious fucking…
Awwww
…’

From the yard, a bright squeak of intense agony. Piercing violence lighting up the night like an electric storm, and Jane, choking, clawing at her mouth, was really scared now, sweat creaming her forehead. Trying to meld with the toilet wall, breathing through her nose, holding her jaw rigid, not even daring to spit.

‘Come and see me again, look, when your balls drop,’ the guy said.

This kind of tittering laugh. A sound you’d swear was the guy clapping Cornel on the back in a
don’t take it to heart
kind of way.

Departing footsteps, light and casual in the alley, but in the yard there was only retching and then Cornel going, ‘
Shit, shit, shit, shit
…’ like he was walking round in circles, while Jane clung to the jagged stones in the toilet wall, her head ballooning with a suffocating nausea.

‘
…shit, shit, shit
…’ from the alleyway now, receding.

Cornel had gone.

Jane sprang away from the wall, coughing out the cobweb and the flies, coughing and coughing, wiping her mouth on her sleeve as she went staggering out into the warm smell of new vomit in the yard.

She was at the top of the alley, where it came out onto the square, when she saw Cornel again.

He was on his own, dragging the black bin sack across the cobbles like some vagrant. He was moving jerkily, his body arched. Jane saw him stop. She saw him pick up the plastic sack with both hands, his gangly body bending in pain like an insect which had been trodden on.

Cornel dumped the sack into one of the concrete litter bins on the square, ramming it in hard before walking crookedly away.

Jane didn’t move until he was long gone and the village centre was unusually deserted in the amber of the fake gas lamps.

Beyond the glow, gables jutted, like Cornel’s chin, into a cold, windless night sky, and the church steeple was moon-frosted as Jane moved unsteadily across to the concrete bin.

‘
YOU DON
’
T HAVE
to take that crap,’ Barry said. ‘There comes a point where you just… you realize you just don’t.’

He’d come back from the kitchens looking dark-faced, angry, and that was rare. A few more customers had come in since, and Marion, the head barmaid, had taken over. Barry had poured himself a Guinness and come to sit with Merrily and Lol.

‘Behaving like a servant is one thing. Being treated like one is something else.’

‘He’d killed a pheasant?’ Lol said.

‘Don’t matter. None of it matters too much now, anyway. When the worst happens, I’m not going to be around.’

He got up suddenly, unhooked a big black poker, turned over the last big apple log, and the flames were instantly all over it. Barry came and sat down, rubbing soot from his hands.

‘The worst?’ Merrily said.

‘I apologize.’ Barry drank some Guinness, wiped his lips almost delicately on a white pocket handkerchief. ‘There’s no reason at all for me not to tell you. Savitch is buying the Swan.’

Pool balls plinked off one another in the Public. Lol put down his pencil.

‘When you think about it, it was only a matter of time,’ Barry said.

‘I didn’t…’ Lol’s voice was parched. ‘The Swan’s for sale?’

‘Way things are now, Laurence, any pub’s for sale. Every day, somewhere in Britain, another one shuts down.’

Merrily stared into the fire. After Christmas, it had become known that the Black Swan’s elderly owner had handed it over to her son, who ran a building firm. The building trade would revive, but the future for pubs…

‘Savitch put in an initial offer last week.’ Barry’s voice was flat. ‘Ridiculously low, and it got turned down, of course. But that was just round one. He’ll be back.’

‘Why’s he doing this?’ Lol said. ‘Why not just, you know,
live
here?’

‘He’s a businessman. The place you live, you want it to look like an enterprise, not a loser’s refuge.’

‘This can’t happen,’ Lol said.

‘It could happen tomorrow, mate, if he doubles his bid. Which I’m sure he can afford to. But I think he’ll wait.’

‘What can we do?’ Merrily said.

‘Pray?’

‘What are his plans, exactly?’

‘Village is set to grow. Maybe he’s on a promise. All too friendly with Councillor Pierce these days.’ Barry leaned his chair back against an oak pillar where a wall had once divided the bar into two rooms. ‘End of the day, we’re just the little people. These things don’t happen on our level, do they? I mean, the word is he’ll ask me to stay on, but that’s… not for me.’

‘I’m so sorry, Barry.’

‘Nah, I’ll be all right. Not sure about Ledwardine, though.’ Barry settled into his chair, evidently more relaxed now it was out. ‘So what’s the problem with Syd Spicer, then, Merrily?’

‘Didn’t think you wanted to talk about him.’

‘I didn’t. Now, suddenly, it seems like light relief. One of your lot now, last I heard.’

‘Actually, one of your lot again. Been made chaplain at Credenhill.’

‘Has he now?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘They don’t put out a newsletter. Chaplain, eh?
Padre
. Well, well.’

‘Barry, could I ask you something in general? About the Regiment?’

Barry shrugged, his jacket tightening, a sleeve rising to expose a purplish scar snaking up his wrist from the palm of his left hand.

‘I’m sorry if it—’

‘Nah, nah, just it’s usually teenage boys. How many men you killed? How many times you been tortured? It can get wearing.’

‘Just that Syd once told me… he said there was a kind of mysticism in the Regiment. His word.’

‘Oh, I see. This is about the things you do on the side.’

Much of the time, Barry’s broad face was smooth and bland, but his eyes were the eyes of a far thinner, warier man. Maybe a colder man. He sucked some froth from his Guinness.

‘Not quite sure what you mean by mysticism. There’s a lot of
myths
.’

Merrily waited. The old apple log was well alight and it felt warmer in here now, almost like old times. But this was the last good log.

‘What can I tell you?’ Barry said. ‘There’ve been geezers I knew, up against a wall, who’ve prayed their hearts out and the wall never moved, know what I mean? And there’s a bloke I know survived against all the odds, and he’s seen it as a miracle and gone hallelujah, praise the Lord, born-again.’

‘What about superstition?’

‘Rabbits’ feet? Not treading on the cracks in the minefield?’ Barry shook his head minimally. ‘Small obsessions can get you hurt.’

‘Fear of the unknown?’

‘You don’t give in to it. If you’re in a tight situation, personal fears take a back seat because you’re concentrating on how to deal with it.’

‘What if it’s something a man knows he can’t get at? I’m wondering at what stage he would think he was going mad.’

‘Blimey,’ Barry said. ‘What’s this about? Only, generally speaking, we don’t do mad. All right. What I’d say is you might
start by eliminating the possibility of there being, say, something in the water – practical stuff.’

‘And when you’ve eliminated the rational, the hallucin- atory…?’

‘We talking about Syd here? Only he’s a bleedin’ vicar.’

‘Not all vicars feel able to take the funny stuff on board. Don’t all take
God
on board any more. At what stage do you think he might seek help?’

‘On a mission, you rely on your mates, your gang. The circumstances would have to be very special for you to venture outside. You read Frank’s book? Frank Collins?’

‘Should have, shouldn’t I?’

Frank Collins: former curate at St Peter’s, Hereford. Ex-SAS. Occasionally spoken of among Hereford clergy, warily.

‘Wish I’d known him,’ Merrily said. ‘But he was dead before I came here.’

By his own hand. Gassed himself in his car. She’d heard it said that he’d become depressed after writing the book about his time in the SAS and his conversion to Christianity. It hadn’t been well received – by the Regiment, not the clergy.