In Guilty Night (25 page)

In her dismal back parlour, Peggy Thomas served the evening meal, the plates landing with a dull thud between the cheap cutlery Carol brought home with her ten per-cent staff discount. Tom stubbed out his cigarette in the unwashed ashtray he carried everywhere, picked up his knife and fork, and began to eat, without thanks to wife or God for the food before him. Picking up her fork, Peggy began to stab at her plate, knocking the food this way and that. Carol regarded her own meal; oven chips burnt one side and almost raw on the other, a splodge of bilious green peas, and two chicken burgers, overcooked and stained with pea juice.

‘Eat up!’ Tom instructed. ‘We can’t afford to waste food. Not like your fancy friends, eh?’

‘Shut up and leave her alone.’ Peggy looked at her daughter. ‘Eat up, you’re looking peaky.’

‘What’s with you, then?’ Tom swallowed noisily. ‘You was tearing each other to bits the other day.’ He looked at Carol again, wiping the back of his hand across the tomato sauce smeared on his mouth. ‘She don’t look more washed-out than normal. Always did look like a sick rabbit.’

‘Shut up! Leave her be!’

‘She’s my kid. I’ll talk how I like and when I like. While she’s under my roof, I’ll talk when I want!’

‘Talk!’ Peggy speared a chip, fork squelching. ‘That’s all you’re fit for!’ She gobbled on her food. ‘And where’s it got you? Eh?’

His cutlery clattered on the plate. ‘Don’t start on me again! It’s not my fault!’

‘What’s not your fault?’ She stabbed another chip. ‘Can’t get a job! Don’t get enough off the social! Can’t help being sodding useless!’ She swallowed the chip, and speared another. ‘You can’t get a job ’cos you’ve been inside.’

He picked up knife and fork again, and cut one of his burgers into neat even segments. ‘Go down the dole office yourself. There aren’t jobs for anybody.’ He made a mouthful of burger, chips and peas on the end of his fork, and wrapped his lips
around it. ‘Maybe you drove me to badness with your bloody nagging.’

Peggy snorted. ‘You were born bad!’

‘So was you.’ He made another mouthful on the end of his fork, and turned to Carol. ‘Your mother paid good money for that food, and she cooked it for you. Ungrateful little bitch!’

‘I said to leave her alone!’

He leaned over and nudged Carol with his elbow. ‘Shall I do what your mam says?’ He smirked. ‘You’d be begging me not to if I was posh Mr Elis and his big posh car, wouldn’t you?’

Carol pushed back her chair, tearing another hole in the threadbare carpet, and stood behind her father, mouth working convulsively, words jammed chokingly in her gullet. She swallowed hard and tasted bile, and rushed from the room.

‘I told you to leave her alone,’ Peggy said, as sounds of retching seeped down the stairs. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

‘It’s after six o’clock!’ Rhiannon fretted to the cook. ‘When will dinner be ready? I have to go out.’

Meticulously polishing knives, forks and spoons fashioned from solid silver, and arranging them on a silver tray to carry to the dining-room, Mari remarked upon the signs of disturbance around her mistress, and marvelled at the humanity they brought to her. ‘The roast’s ready, and the vegetables. And the soup, I expect.’ She took a sheaf of white linen napkins from the drawer, and began to make scallop shapes, puzzling about the anxiety which gnawed at Rhiannon’s eyes like the teeth which gnawed her lower lip.

‘We could’ve got the same in the canteen, sir.’ Dewi stood beside McKenna in the High Street chip shop, reading the menu board above the counter. ‘I fancy sausage and chips and gravy. What about you, sir? A nice haddock in crispy batter’d please your cat, wouldn’t it?’ He put his hands in his pockets, and leaned against the counter. ‘I know you’re not supposed to mix with the rank and file, but Mam would love to give you a decent meal now and then. I’m not being personal, but you eat a lot of fish and chips and suchlike, and if you were any younger, you’d come out in spots.’ Pausing while McKenna gave their orders, he went on, ‘Mrs Tuttle does a good spread, but I don’t expect they feel much like entertaining. Don’t you feel really sorry for her? She’s got to put up with the twins knowing too much about being teenagers, and him forgetting
everything, though God knows how he’s managed!’ He smiled. ‘I wonder if I will. Do we cross over into being grown up, and forget all the dread and loneliness? I used to watch the others, and copy them so as not to stick out like a sore thumb, ’til my Nain saw me copying Jamie Thief. You’ve no idea how I envied him! And that brazen cheek, pinching all the excitement! But look where it got him. Maybe the likes of Pastor Evans are right about virtue and the wages of sin. The twins are very pretty girls,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Mr Tuttle doesn’t know the meaning of worry yet.’ Watching their food shovelled from the hot cupboard on to yellowy-brown polystyrene trays, and wrapped in cheap white paper, he asked, ‘Are we going to Blodwel after?’

McKenna nodded.

‘That’ll be a barrel of laughs.’ He took the food parcels while McKenna paid. ‘We should’ve gone to the other chippy and asked if Mandy’s shown her face yet.’

Pastor Evans nodded to his wife, and she pushed the cheeseboard towards him. He cut a hunk from a wedge of Stilton, and set about the finishing touch to his evening meal. ‘Pour the coffee, please, Janet.’

‘Pour your own!’

Mrs Evans flushed. ‘Don’t speak to your father like that!’ Her voice was tense, fearful of impending drama.

‘Why not?’

The minister sighed, tapping the butter knife on the side of his plate, annoyed by the disruption to the calm picture he liked to hold in his mind, of room and occupants displayed under the soft lights like figures in a canvas, seated by a table draped in white and strewn with gauzy porcelain, while shadows flickered in the space beyond. He nodded to his wife again, and she took the silver coffee pot, performing the service her daughter disdained.

‘Have you ever disobeyed him?’ Janet asked her mother. ‘Ever challenged him? Ever been disgusted with yourself for letting him bully you?’

‘Leave your mother out of this. Your quarrel, whatever it is, seems to be with me.’

‘You disgust me!’ Janet snapped. She picked up the coffee her mother served, the cup rattling against her teeth. ‘You are unbelievably hypocritical.’

‘Am I?’ Pastor Evans licked a smear of cream from his lip.
‘How have I offended your socialist sensibilities this time?’

‘Don’t patronize me!’

Mrs Evans held her cup halfway to her mouth, dismayed to find a faint stain from last Sunday’s lunch still disfiguring the snowy damask of her tablecloth.

‘I suppose you heard about Sian from the estate.’ He wondered when the child he adored became this angry stranger threatening the peace of his household. ‘Janet, you know the congregation regards me as an arbiter of public morals and looks to me for leadership, and I must understand the nature of the leadership people want and can tolerate. I’ve no quarrel with that poor silly girl, and nor has the congregation.’ He waited for a response, but she remained mutinously silent. ‘If I’d offered her the blessing, it would be tantamount to condoning, if not encouraging, her behaviour, and that would be misguided. There are lines we must draw, boundaries we should try not to cross, and there’s no profit for anyone in encouraging girls to bring babies into the world without a husband, or the means to care for them properly. I know some women called her a brazen hussy for attending the churching, but I believe she was simply ill-advised. Sian will understand why I ignored her when she understands the need to consider the feelings of the community in which she lives.’

‘So you humiliated her in front of three hundred people for her own good?’ Janet demanded.

‘If you like. And for the good of other girls, who might be tempted by the rubbish in silly magazines about “love-children” and “free love”. You know that kind of love comes with an enormous price-tag. Many of those poor children in care are the consequence of stupidity, of an arrogance thinking society’s rules are there to be flouted.’

Janet smiled, and her mother exhaled, sensing relief from the tension. ‘So is that why people treat them like rubbish, and don’t have qualms about beatings and buggery?’ Putting down her cup, she pushed back her chair, scraping a furrow in the dense carpet. ‘Those children have no right to be born, have they? Like Sian’s baby, their very existence is offensive.’ She leaned on the table, and stared at her father. ‘But they have their uses, otherwise the perverts so knowingly protected by church and chapel wouldn’t be able to satisfy their nasty little habits. And please don’t insult me by saying I’m exaggerating, because even the Church of England has finally come clean.’

Pastor Evans carefully chewed and swallowed a mouthful of
cheese and biscuit before responding. Looking at Janet as one might a stranger, he thought how tense and pale she was, the bloom on her lips already withering. He sniffed, and fancied there was that sourness about her youth the old carried with them like the scent of rotting flowers around a grave. ‘Why, Janet?’ He sensed something to pity beneath the rage that glazed her eyes.

‘Why what?’ she snapped.

‘Why d’you hold with the nonsense I’d shield child abusers? Don’t you trust me any longer?’ He shook his head, smiling slightly. ‘What’s next? A suddenly recovered memory of something terrible from your childhood that’s my fault?’

‘The church comes first, last and always with you. How can I trust you? People don’t trust the Jews, because when it comes to the church, they’re loyal to their faith, not their country.’

‘The Jews are loyal to their conscience, as I try to be.’ He laid down his knife and pushed aside the plate, glancing at his wife, who sat with head bowed, staring at her untouched food, hands balled in fists beneath the shrouding tablecloth. ‘I told you about Christmas Morgan, and much good it did, least of all him. What right have we to parade his weakness before the rest of the world? What harm has he done, except to himself? There’s not a chapel in North Wales where he’ll be able to lift his head again. He’ll retire.’

‘He’s not fit to lead a congregation,’ Janet snapped. ‘He’ll be cosy in his love-nest with his pension and his bit of skirt.’

‘The young lady walked out on him, as I daresay the fun was over once she accomplished his fall from grace.’ Pastor Evans watched uncertainty chase confusion over Janet’s features, both devoured by the bitterness which chewed at her mouth. ‘Would you like your weakness held up to public scrutiny? Would you like to be treated like a freak show because, like the rest of us, you’re less than perfect?’

‘My weaknesses don’t harm others. I don’t prey on others. I don’t abuse children.’

‘We all prey on each other and we all harm each other, to some extent. In my way, I try to limit that capacity for harm as best I can.’ He rose from the chair, patience suddenly exhausted, and looked hard at the girl whose eyes still held accusation. ‘I think you should consider leaving home. You’re too old to live with your parents. Your perspectives are too narrow, and all this tension is bad, especially for your mother.’

‘Damn you! You’re nothing but a stereotype!’

‘Look in the mirror, Janet, and tell me what you see.’

Blodwel used the hillside not as shelter from the elements, Dewi thought, but to hide its shameful face from the world. Seated in the car beside McKenna, he looked at the bleak dark building, then at the sleek dark shape parked beside them, the sheen on the bonnet and wing greasy with damp. ‘Nice car. Shame to park it round here.’

‘I should’ve told Janet to come,’ McKenna said.

Dewi nodded towards the other car. ‘We could ask Rhiannon to sit in with us.’

‘You know we can’t.’ McKenna unbuckled the seat belt, and opened the door. ‘God knows why she’s here.’

‘Damage limitation.’ Dewi trailed McKenna up the path towards the front door. ‘Fronting for Hogg and ugly Doris, the general at the head of the army. Do they know we’re coming?’

‘We’ve been expecting you since early afternoon.’ Ronald Hogg stamped towards his office, leaving his wife to fumble with the huge bunch of keys at the front door. Dewi remained with her, a larger shadow in the ill-lit twilight of the cold fusty hall. Following Hogg, McKenna smelt again that sour odour which twisted at his innards.

‘Another of your erstwhile residents is dead,’ McKenna said. ‘I went to see his parents.’

‘Fair enough.’ Hogg sat behind his desk. ‘But you could’ve let me know. I’ve already said these visits are disruptive, and while I appreciate the job you’re doing, I can’t share your single focus. Blodwel has to keep going, along with the children’s treatment plans. Callous though it may sound, Arwel Thomas is history. I’ve got to see to the living, and make sure they’re protected from more trauma.’

‘And what can you tell me about Tony Jones?’

Hogg sighed. ‘Don’t you think suicide’s like spitting in the face of God? He probably killed himself out of spite, hoping he’d make those left behind wallow in guilt like flies in shit.’ Sighing again, he added, ‘Despair wouldn’t come into it. Boys like him don’t trade in proper feelings. They copy what television and trashy videos dish up in the name of emotion. I’ve no doubt the parents gave a show of pseudo-grief to make you weep.’

‘On the contrary, they seemed beyond more grief. I suspect the family was blown apart when Tony left, and his suicide
only leaves more unfinished business, more reproaches nobody can voice or negate.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘They’re utterly degraded, their sensibilities completely eroded, like the little thieves on the scaffold, watching those who stole all hope go scot free.’ He dropped ash in a metal waste bin. ‘And I don’t believe they should feel guilt, because they lack the wherewithal to steal anything of value.’

‘Except childhood from their children.’ Hogg wrinkled his nose as smoke drifted towards the white net curtains behind him. ‘Their stupidity makes them bestial.’

‘I’m surprised you hold such an archaic view, Mr Hogg, when it’s over two centuries since even the insane gained a toehold on the ladder of humanity.’