September Again (September Stories) (2 page)

“
Don’t they all? Byron, Keats, Shelley.”

“My dad was one. He
’s dead too.”

“Tragic.”

“Yeah, especially because he married the wrong woman.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he should have married Indie, but she thought he was having an affair with some other woman and threw herself under the wheels of an express train.”

“Nooooo!”

“Yep. And then he went and married an American gold digger.”

“Rich was he?”

“I hate my mother.”

“
Don’t we all! Mine ran off with a policewoman when I was three.”

“Really?”

“Excuse me while I serve those people. Don’t go; I’ll be right back. Would you like another coffee?”

“
No thanks; I have to go. Do you know where The Roundhouse is? Indie performed there with my dad once. I’ve got to go and experience the place. I could have been Indie’s daughter if things had been different. She was very, very beautiful and amazingly talented. My dad was oodles in love with her. Crazy poets. They’re all crazy.”

Zelda blinks in embarrassment when she
realizes her new friend for life is serving at another table and that she’s talking to herself. Danny the Demon smirks, but then casts a sly glance at Dagmar’s boyfriend. Zelda turns to check him out and catches him looking directly at her. Danny knows. Zelda shivers and thinks of the money in her bag and how Dagmar has seen it. Shit. She clutches her bag close to her and is about to get up and go when she sees him, standing outside where the smoker had been, sheltering from the rain, looking up and down the street – Spider.

She lowers her face, holds
up a menu, and closes her eyes.

Spider Webb, ex
Special Forces, her father’s retainer, for want of a better word. His gofer, for want of a worse word. He must be looking for her. He has to be. How the hell did he know? She has not used her credit card once. Is she bugged in some sinister way? Surely not; he’d have reeled her in by now if she was. And if he knew where she was, he would not be standing outside right now. She loves Spider and knows he knows how things are between her and the witchy bitch. But she also knows that he will be obliged to take her back to Cornwall. Dagmar returns with another coffee.

“On the house. Are you al
l right?”

“
Just checking out the menu. You never know!”

Spider’s gone. Zelda sips her unwanted coffee. Dagmar smiles like an advert for innocence.
She knows that Zelda has played her. But the game goes on. Her boyfriend takes a quick pic. Dagmar blows him a kiss and smiles the more. But Zelda knows that it is she who has been captured in his phone and that Dagmar’s smiles and kisses are just a camouflage net over a more sinister design.
Told you to keep your money close
, sneers Danny the Demon. If only she’d listened. She will next time. She makes a mental note to find a friendly bank and break some of the fifties into smaller denominations. She gets up to go.

“
Do you know your way to The Roundhouse?” asks Dagmar.

“Yeah, thanks,”
lies Zelda as she lumbers out onto the street. She knows Spider will find her, but carries on regardless; The Roundhouse or bust. She goes the wrong way. Perhaps it’s the lovefood kicking in with a sugar high, or perhaps it was looking at Indie’s face on her phone, whatever – she’s stoked and steaming. People notice her now as she marches down the street, a large teen with a look in her eye that’s best avoided.

“Hey
, lady!” protests a skinny guy with a window-cleaner’s short ladder on his shoulder as he bounces off her. Savage by name. Zelda Savage, and don’t you forget it. IQ 165. Who’d have thought it? But then there’s smart intelligence and stupid intelligence.

“
Over the bridge,” says the community support officer. “Five minutes max.”

She actually spots Spider before he sees her.

“Looking for someone?” she says as she walks up to him. “I’m not going back.”

He stands and gives her a long
, hard look. A guy in a denim jacket who’d been following her knows that he’s been clocked by a more dangerous force and gives up the pursuit of what’s in her bag. You can’t be too careful. And Spider does have more than a hint of the hard-man Russian about him. Special Forces will do that to a person.

“
I hope you know you were being followed,” he says to her.

“Was I?”

“Yes, some skink-faced weasel.”

“
Just as well you saved me then, right?”

“
Leave it out, Zelda, or I’ll put you over my knee and give your arse a good tannin’. Your mother is worried sick about you.”

“I don’t fuckin’ care.”

“Language.”

“
Fuck off, Spider.”

“
And you, the daughter of one of the finest exponents of the English language. Tut tut.”

“What do you want?”

“You to be okay.”

“Then leave me alone.”

“Come on, Zelda. You know I can’t do that.”

“
I’ll call the police and say you’re a perv.”

“
Okay, and I just say you’re a runaway.”

“
I’m not going back.”

“
Then where are you going?”

“
The Roundhouse.”

“
Lead the way.”

The two of them walk up Camden
’s High Street to The Roundhouse. They refuse to let Zelda in. But Spider has a word and in they go. They sit in silence at the back of the auditorium in what used to be an engine shed with a turntable at its heart. Zelda speaks first.

“
I love you, Indie,” she says at the empty stage. “I promise I always will. You loved my father and, by rights, I should be your daughter.”

Spider ponders the strange things he has had to do in his life.

“Spider, I’m ready to go back now.”

He tries to disguise his amazed relief.

“Take me home.”

“
Come on, love,” he says, putting an arm around her and hugging her. “It’s for the best. Your dad’d be proud of you.”

“
My dad’s dead, Spider.”

“
Ain’t that the truth, love. Ain’t that the truth. Sorry, girl. Come on; let’s be off, then.”

Three hours later, when Spider is pulling out of a service station on the M3 motorway, Zelda tries to get out of the accelerating Merc
edes after receiving a phone call from her mother, Liz. Luckily, Spider is equal to the exigency of the moment. That’s British military training for you. As to Zelda’s state of mind and her rotten relationship with her mother, it goes on and on.

Spider locks the doors and drives off. Ten miles on, Zelda has stopped sobbing and is in the deepest of sleeps. Spider turns the radio on
sotto voce
and settles down for a long drive. He gazes at Zelda’s sleeping form in his rear view and wonders about the puzzling way of genes and family life as the Mercedes glides through the night back towards Cornwall and home sweet home. Not.

“
Things I do for you, Jack O. Savage. God rest your soul.”

“W
hat exactly do you want with me?” the old woman asks Zelda. (Zelda is now BMI twenty-eight and falling.)

“
I just want to know more about her.”

“
Why?”

“
I love her.”

“
You love her?”

“
Yes.”

“
I knew this was a mistake.”

“
Please help me.”

“
My daughter was an idiot who threw herself under a train.”

“
Why do you say that?”

“
Because it happens to be true. She was never a very likeable child and she got worse, the older she got.”

“
Oh.”

“
Oh, indeed. I don’t know who you think you are, barging in on my life like this. But let me tell you this: you are not welcome here. You are stirring up some very painful memories of a time in my life that I would rather forget about.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Are you?”

“
Yes.”

“
It’s just a word.”

“
She was your daughter.”

“
She was a sick girl who lost her way and jumped in front of a train. It killed her father.”

“
Oh.”

“
Oh, indeed. There’s a lot that you don’t know about my daughter, young woman, coming here with all your questions. What right have you got to march into my life, digging up the past? Tell me. I’d like to know.”

“
I respect her.”

“
You loved her a moment ago.”

“
I’m Jack O. Savage’s daughter.”

“
You’ve told me that before. It butters no parsnips with me. They were all irresponsible, those poets. I never approved of her getting into all that. She could have been a head teacher by now if she’d followed my advice, settled down with a husband and a couple of children. And I would be a grandmother surrounded by my family, instead of a widow and the lonely mother of a stupid suicide.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Don’t be.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because it changes nothing. She wasn’t even a very good poet.”

“
She was brilliant! And very beautiful.”

“
That’s all that matters these days, isn’t it? Looks.”

“
No. Not with me. I loved the things your daughter wrote. She was a lovely person when she was well.”

“
Exactly, when she was well, which wasn’t very often and was a lot less often when she took up with your father.”

“
I’m sorry; what do you mean by that?”

“
It was because of your father that my daughter jumped under the wheels of the 0830 Penzance to London express. Had she not known him, she might still be alive today.”

“
Do you really mean that?”

“
Yes.”

“
That’s a harsh thing to say.”

“
It’s the truth.”

“
You make my father sound evil.”

“
I’m sure he wasn’t evil. But I am equally sure he was a terrible influence on her.”

“
She loved him.”

“
Exactly. To death. Hers.”

“
He never wanted that. He was trying to save her. He saw her die. It was all a massive mistake. She got the wrong end of the stick. She thought he was having an affair with some other woman when he wasn’t. He told me all about it.”

“
Lucky you. How do you think hearing all this after all these years makes me feel? Why are you swooping into my life like this and nosing around?”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Don’t keep saying you’re sorry. I think you’d better go. I knew this would achieve nothing.”

“
No, it has, actually.”

“
I am glad it has been of some benefit to you. It has been of no benefit to me whatsoever.”

“
May I ask, why are you so against poets?”

“
Their behavior is undesirable.”

“
In what way?”

“
They allow passion to cloud their reason. Always a bad idea.”

“
I see.”

“
I think not. How could you? You are obsessed by the poetic glamour, by the sounds of things you say. Take my advice: forget it. Study hard. Make something of yourself. Poetry! Ha! It’s intangible.”

“
I keep a picture of your daughter on my phone.”

“
For goodness sake. Why?”

“
Look. She was very beautiful.”

“
Don’t keep saying that. She was always very average.”

“
Look.”

“
Don’t keep thrusting that thing in my face like that. I know my own daughter.”

“
You’re not even looking at her.”

“
Who are you to talk to me like this in my own house?”