Easy Meat (16 page)

Well done,” he said to Naylor. “Good work. Now get off home and get some sleep. I’ll not want you propping your eyes open when you’re back on duty.”

Resnick had only that second put the phone down when it rang again. Instantly he recognized Millington’s somewhat nasal, bemused tone. In the background he could hear somebody practicing scales; after her triumph in the title role of
The Merry Widow
, Madeleine was preparing herself for the amateur operatic season once again.

“Morning, Graham. What can I do for you?”

“I was just wondering,” Millington said. “You’ve not heard anything about upping staffing levels? Ours, I mean.”

Resnick hadn’t heard a thing.

“Just I caught a whisper things were lightening up; few new bodies transferring in. Thought Jack Skelton might’ve mentioned something. Only, if it’s a case of staking a claim, well, that team of ours has been overstretched for more time’n I care to remember.”

What his sergeant was preferring not to recall was the murder of Dipak Patel, several years before, stabbed in the street when he intervened in a street brawl, his attacker never identified, never apprehended.

“This whisper, Graham, you wouldn’t like to be more specific as to the source, I suppose?”

“Rather not, boss.”

Just so, thought Resnick, nobody likes to get caught talking out of turn. “Okay, Graham, thanks for the tip. I’ll give Skelton a ring now, see if there’s anything can be done.”

“Right,” said Millington, and then, barely disguising the smirk, “Off to the match this afternoon, I dare say? Another bit of history in the making.”

Resnick lowered the receiver onto Millington’s laugh. After a season in which the club had hired and fired almost as many managers as their strikers had managed goals, today’s game was County’s last mathematical chance of avoiding relegation. Resnick didn’t like to think about it.

He dialed the superintendent’s number and was greeted by Alice Skelton’s shrewish voice, each syllable like lemon rind squeezed through a grater. “Jack at home on Saturday morning, Charlie? Be reasonable. Why remain in the bosom of his family when there are stupid little golf balls to be hit about? Or in Jack’s case, more like skewed into a bunker.”

“Thank you, Alice,” Resnick said pleasantly, “perhaps you’ll tell him I called.”

He poured his second cup of coffee and drank it black, while reading the Review section of the previous day’s
Guardian;
not a natural choice of newspaper for Resnick—hardly the police officer’s friend—but recently they’d started a jazz CD review that was half-way decent. Dizzy Gillespie leading a big band that included Clark Terry, now that did sound interesting.

After telling himself he wasn’t going to go near the County ground, Resnick turned up with five minutes to spare and found a seat on the same side he had stood in previous seasons, Saturday after alternate Saturday, surrounded by the same loose group of moaners and celebrants with whom he had shared the dubious delights of being a Notts supporter. But now government edicts had been followed and the old place was transformed into a smart all-seater stadium, the price of admission had just about doubled, most of Resnick’s friends had drifted away, and after finding all that money for improvements, the club had failed to find a similar amount to improve the team.

On this particular Saturday there seemed to be at least two players in home team shirts—minimum wage recruits from a youth training scheme, most likely—that Resnick was at odds to recognize and, from the way they began playing, the rest of the side were none the wiser.

Trying to defend their goal, two County defenders collided with each other, jumping for the same ball. For Resnick it was the last straw. Fifteen minutes before the end, head bowed, he turned and headed for the exit, shoulder to shoulder with all those other supporters who had opted to do the same.

After that he knew a night in his own company was not a good idea: he considered phoning Hannah on the off-chance she wasn’t already going out, and if that were so she might consider going out with him. But by the time he had reached the main road, he had dismissed the idea from his head. Against all of his previous inclinations, he would go to the Polish Club instead.

He had bought the light-gray suit six years ago or more and in so far as he had a favorite, this was it; there was only one small stain that he could find, a dark patch near the lapel which mostly came away when he scraped at it with a fingernail. He ironed a pale-blue shirt and knotted his dark-blue tie with more than usual care. The bar in the Polish Club divided the large room into two unequal halves, and in the larger of these, the one with a small stage for the band, he found Marian seated at the bar.

“Charles! You are here! Come, come, come over and join us. Oh, you don’t know how good it is to see you.” As Marian squeezed his hand and enthusiastically kissed both of his cheeks, Resnick thought he was beginning to get the idea.

Wearing a black dress with a discreet white bow, a single strand of pearls at her neck, she was surrounded by several of those married men in late middle age whose fortnightly frisson came from flirting with her out of earshot of their wives. Her hair had been pushed up high on her head and was held in place with a silver barrette; silver earrings accentuated the slenderness of her neck. She was an elegant woman, some would say beautiful; some of those standing by her, Resnick assumed, frequently did. They had stepped back reluctantly to let him through and now continued to stand there, grudgingly, while Marian plied Resnick with questions, offered to buy him the vodka of his choice, smiled into his eyes. Ten minutes more and they had slunk away, back to their wives.

“You’re looking happy, Marian.”

“Not beautiful?”

“Of course.”

“Desirable?” She was laughing at him with her eyes.

Why was it, Resnick wondered, and not for the first time, that in all the years he had known her—since, almost, they had been children—he had never entertained about her one sexual thought? Was it that, along with her beauty, she wore her Polishness so obviously on her sleeve? That to think of her as a partner—any kind of serious partner—would be to step back into a life that he had all but rejected. His parents’ life, a life in exile. Strangers in a strange land.

He looked around the room at the women in their flared dresses, the men, some of them, in bow ties, the children who skittered between the tables got up like miniature editions of their elders; out on the dance floor, two couples essaying a waltz to the accordion-led band; photographs of fallen generals on the walls.

“Charles, what are you thinking?”

Resnick smiled. “Oh nothing important.”

“Some dreadful crime?”

He shook his head. “Marian, I promise you it wasn’t that.”

For a moment she rested her hand on his arm. “You know, Charles, one of the things that would make me most happy? If one evening, like this evening, you would walk in here with a beautiful woman on your arm, someone with whom you are in love.”

Despite himself, Resnick laughed. “Marian, you’re just a dreamer.”

“Oh.” She brought her face close. “And you are not?”

“I think,” Resnick said, finishing his vodka and turning towards the band, “it might almost be time for us to have that dance.”

Waltz over, the elderly couples moved slowly back towards their seats, the accordionist tested his fingers with an exploratory flourish and announced the first polka of the evening. Marian slipped out of her high heels into a pair of flat shoes she had brought expressly for the purpose, and took Resnick’s arm as they stepped onto the floor.

Forty minutes later, with only two brief intervals, they were still there, perspiring lightly, Resnick’s tie loose at his neck, top button of his shirt unfastened.

“You see.” Marian laughed, colliding with his chest as the number came to an unruly end. “You see what fun you are having? And why you should come here more often?”

Resnick dabbed at his temples and looked longingly towards the bar. “I think I need a drink.”

She caught at his hands. “In a little while.” Mischief danced in her eyes. “I had a talk with my friend the bandleader earlier. I think I know what they are going to play now.”

When Carl Perkins wrote it, it’s doubtful if he ever imagined it sounding exactly this way, but Polish rock’n’roll was what it was, “Blue Suede Shoes” what it is. One of the things Resnick had learned from his uncle, the tailor who had been to America and returned with a love of jazz and the jitterbug, was how to jive; who Marian had learned it from, Resnick had never known. But together, Resnick’s unbuttoned jacket performing a dance of its own, while not sensational they were pretty good.

“Roll Over Beethoven.”

“Tutti Frutti.”

“Little Queenie.”

Resnick missed his footing, failed to catch Marian’s outstretched hand, and came close to trampling a small child underfoot. It was enough. And this time he would brook no argument.

They walked around into the second bar and found two seats; while Marian went to refresh herself in the Ladies, Resnick chatted with the waistcoated barman and came away with two cold beers. I wonder, he thought, whether Hannah can dance like that? Oh, Charles, and you are not a dreamer? He should never have let her into his mind. When Marian returned, he excused himself and went outside to the phone. He had no real expectation that she would be in, but she picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hannah?”

“Yes.”

A slight pause, and then, “I didn’t think you’d be there.”

“Who is this?”

When he told her there was a small silence before she said, “And was that why you phoned, because you thought I wouldn’t be here?”

“No.”

He could hear music, faint and distant, something she was listening to, guitars. “Is it too late,” he asked, “for you to meet me for a drink?”

Twenty

Hannah had gone to the smaller of the two Broadway cinemas that afternoon and seen a Tunisian film,
The Silences of the Palace
; herself and perhaps half a dozen others watching a woman returning from exile to a newly independent country and slowly coming to terms with the demands of present and past. The woman, a singer, among other women for whom silence was the only option. Hannah had sat at the end of one row, close against the wall, trying not to fight against the deliberately slow passing of time, fighting her prejudice against the harsh sounds of Arabic. Gradually, the film had won her over, so that, by the end, she was immersed in its rhythm, and when she left, the voices and the movement in the Café Bar next door seemed relentless and loud. She resented the traffic and the crowds out on the streets. Crossing the end of Clumber Street towards the Old Market Square, she thought she spotted Sheena Snape among a group of half a dozen or so girls, noisily blocking the pavement outside the bank.

There were young men in the square wearing football shirts with black and white stripes, threatening to push one another into the fountain. Hannah maneuvered around them and walked up St. James Street and past the Tales of Robin Hood, heading uphill towards Lenton, where she lived in a terraced Victorian house overlooking a swathe of grass and a children’s playground, a church, and a crown bowling green.

The light was blinking twice on her answerphone.

There were people, she supposed, who could take off their coat, change their shoes, put on the kettle, empty the rubbish, do any number of other things before pressing the button marked “play.” She was not one of them.

The first voice was her father’s, calling from the French village to which he had moved three years before. Now his time was taken up in restoring a crumbling barn with the woman for whom he had left Hannah’s mother, an architectural student and would-be writer almost ten years younger than Hannah herself.

“She’ll leave you, Dad,” Hannah had said, out there to visit last year, the pair of them sitting in the shade while Alexa busied herself inside. “You know that, don’t you?”

He had taken both Hannah’s hands in his and kissed the bridge of her nose. “Of course she will. In time.” He winked. “Just so long as we get this place finished first, eh? Then at least she’ll leave me with a roof over my head to be miserable under.”

On the tape, his voice was robust, happy; happier than she could ever remember him seeming in that commuter town in Kent, in every day on the seven twenty-three, home on the six fifty-four.

Hannah thought the second caller might be her mother, the family symmetry perfect, but it was Joanne, a colleague from work; she had a doubles court booked at the tennis center at ten tomorrow morning and someone had dropped out, did Hannah want to take their place? Hannah thought that she might; she dialed Joanne’s number, but the line was engaged.

She would try later. Now she made the tea and drank it with a slice of coffee-and-almond cake and that day’s
Independent.
There was a frozen lasagna she could pop into the microwave, the makings of a salad, two piles of folders on the table waiting to be marked. She had treated herself to the new Marge Piercy and it sat, fat and white, on the arm of her chair in the window, asking to be read.
The Longings of Women.
Ah, yes, Hannah thought, we all know about those.

She was just pouring herself a glass of wine when the phone called her into the other room; certain it would be Joanne, checking about the tennis, she was ill-prepared for her mother’s brittle cheeriness, wanting Hannah’s advice about holidays—walking in Crete or painting water colors at Flatford Mill? Hannah understood it was her mother’s way of saying, see how well I’m surviving, being positive, still turning your father’s desertion into an oasis of opportunity. Go to Crete, Hannah wanted to say, you’re more likely to meet a man. Some swarthy shepherd who will adore your trim, well-articulated body and white skin. As if that were all she—her mother—any of them—needed.
The Longings of Women
indeed!

Fifteen minutes later, not unkindly, Hannah told her mother there was marking she had to finish, replaced the receiver, and took wine and book upstairs to the bay windowed room which she used as her study and which looked out over the park. She had arranged a wicker armchair stuffed with cushions close against the window and, curtains open, she liked to sit there in the evenings, reading, glancing out at intervals to watch the light fading through the tops of the trees.