Slightly Foxed (3 page)
Authors: Jane Lovering
something twitchily close, then it was gone. "Yeah. I'm cool.
How about you, Alys, you okay?"
Gosh. It was a long time since anyone had asked that.
"Look, Piers, it's really very kind of you to come all this way,
but Florrie's already decided she's done enough revision. Do
you want a drink or something before you head back? Coffee,
tea? Lemonade?" I could have bitten my tongue off. He was
twenty-one, for God's sake, not nine. "Whisky? Oh, but you're
driving—"
"Nah. Like I said, I'm cool." He looked it, cucumber cool in
all that black whilst I felt unnaturally hot and oppressed by
the air in the flat.
I followed him into the living room where, to my surprise,
Grainger was submitting to a head scratching. It could only
be a matter of time before fingers were lost. "How's the new
car?"
"Pure kick-ass." Piers left Grainger and whirled to the
window, all long-limbed animation like a Quentin Blake
cartoon come to life. "There, see? The yellow Porsche? Hey,
why don't you come for a drive, Alys? We could shoot through
to the coast, top down, catch some sea air?" He was talking
without looking at me, couldn't take his eyes off the car.
"Oh." I hesitated, a quick
Thelma and Louise
moment
flashing before my eyes as I saw myself zipping along a coast
road next to Piers, top off. Off the car, obviously, not off
Piers. "Better not. I've got stuff to do. And there's a book I
want to read." I glanced apologetically towards Theo.
Grainger was stomping across his cover trying to attract
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Piers's attention again by chewing the cushions, mugging like
Jack Nicholson in a small fur coat.
"Well, okay. But, look." He'd dropped his gaze again,
hands in the pockets of his jacket, awkward as a teenager. "I
really need to talk to you sometime. It's just family stuff, but
I don't know who else I can go to with this shit."
"Really? But I don't know anything about your family." I
felt a bit strange having this conversation. A bit wrong footed.
My memory had Piers down as a teenager, but here he was,
very obviously an adult. Making adult conversation.
"It's Ma and Alasdair. It's getting kinda heavy." Once more
he met my eyes, and I found myself wondering, not for the
first time, how blue-eyed, epitome-of-WASPness Tamar had
managed to produce such a sultry-eyed son. "Please, Alys.
I've always been able to talk to you."
"It's—"
"Please." This time soft, fractured. The faint twang of his
American parentage crept in around the vowels, made him
sound vulnerable.
"Oh, all right." Aware that I'd sounded ungracious, and he
really did look unsettled, I added, "If there's anything I can
help with."
"How about tomorrow? I told Florence I'd bring her back
here after school."
"Um. Tomorrow might be tricky. I have my book group on
a Monday night." Because something about his straight stare
made me feel like filling in uncalled-for detail I began to
gabble. "It was my turn to choose, you see, and I gave them
Dead Air
. I really want to know what they think."
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"Your book group." Piers gave a tiny grin. "Is that the one
where everyone's over eighty?"
"No, Mrs. Treadgold's only seventy-three. And I'm"—well,
thirty-six actually, but damned if I'd admit it—"not eighty
either."
"And you gave them
Dead Air
? Shit, Alys, they've probably
all had coronaries. Do you know how many fucks there are in
that book?"
"Never counted. So, anyway, tomorrow would be tricky."
He gave me an odd sideways smile and pushed pale silver-
ringed fingers through his unAryan hair. "I'll give you a lift.
Pick you up at eight."
And he was gone in a blur of blackness, flinging himself
out of the front door and down the stairs with an energy
which almost crackled. Despite myself, I found I was
watching from the window as the Porsche roared away down
the street.
A momentary pang—a drive to the coast would have been
nice—then I shook my head and settled myself back down
with Theo.
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by Jane Lovering
Jacinta was unlocking the door when I arrived at Webbe's
next morning. "Simon says he is not coming in today. He is
'busy'." She stooped to pick up the post. I gave a deep sigh.
"You need new clothe," Jace diagnosed as we went round
flipping switches. "Several new clothes. Always make me feel
better when I am depressing. Without nice clothe, you never
find a man."
This morning Jace was wearing a purple blouse and a
multicoloured, tiered skirt dotted with tiny mirrors and with a
row of little bells sewn around the hem. I wouldn't have been
surprised if she'd been pecked to death on her way to work
by a flock of disenfranchised budgies.
"No point in buying new clothe...clothes. Florence wouldn't
care and there's no one else to notice." I turned on the cash
register. "I'm not depressed anyway. And I don't want a man.
I've given up men. Three-dimensional ones, anyway."
Jace looked dubious. "You are not saying that when you
are meeting that person with the hair. Who is coming to play
with his instrument in the shop last year."
"Yeah, well. Look what happened that time." Leonard
"Waspy" Binns—what a mistake. "In fact, I think I'm about
this far"—I held my hands apart a few inches—"from taking
Holy Orders."
"You would make terrible nun." Jace began tidying, her
skirts whirling, chiming and creating fractured reflections as
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she went. "You have too-pretty face to be under a Mr. Whippy
hat."
"I think I just changed my mind," I surprised myself by
saying. "How about we pop out at lunchtime?" Maybe some of
Piers's devil-may-care attitude had rubbed off on me. It was
certainly unlike me to be this spontaneous.
Jacinta nearly fell off the stool she was standing on to flick
dust from the top of a cupboard. "Alys! You taking advice
from me? I am astonished." She lowered her voice. "Is this
meaning there is a man you are deciding upon?"
"Good God, no. Well, there was a man last night that I
thought was particularly gorgeous, but seeing that he's
unsuitable on account of being dead, then, no. I just feel like
buying something."
"We shall buy you something," Jace said, decidedly.
"Green. You must be wearing green, Alys. It go with your hair
and your skin."
Before you conjure a vision of me as some kind of sickly-
hued subsea monster, I should mention that I'm a redhead.
Not flaming red, but kind of dark auburn with the associated
pale skin which makes hot sun a factor-50-coated ordeal.
"It will depend on what the charity shops of York have to
offer us, won't it?"
Jace's face settled into lines of disappointment. "Can we
not be buying something really new?" she asked forlornly.
"You deserve a dress with still the real price label on, which
does not smell of some other hot persons."
"Just paid the Council Tax," I said with the briskness I'd
spent years cultivating in a way only the truly broke can
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master. The bell twitched its nerve-jangling message that a
customer had arrived, and I walked through to see a woman
standing at the desk, jittering as though she badly needed
either the toilet or some Valium. I sized her up as I
approached. About my age, tall, well turned out. Good
hairstyle, graded bob, but not the cutting edge of the city.
Looked like the classic "out of towner". Was she a guilty
secret of Simon's?
"Good morning," I announced brightly and she stopped
jigging, turning nervous dark eyes in my direction.
"Er. Are you—I mean—is Mr. Webbe available?" The
woman had an accent, definitely not local. "I've come to pick
up the books that were mistakenly sold at the auction last
week," she went on. "Only I spoke to Mr. Webbe and he said I
could collect them today?"
Her voice was only a little less diffident than Simon's. If
the two of them
had
been a couple, their combined hesitancy
would have meant that the relationship would die of reticence
before they ever got their clothes off. "Simon's away at a
book sale, I'm afraid." I picked up the heap of books I'd
arranged yesterday. "But the books are here." I'd piled the
books carefully, sure that the early-edition Dickens would be
the ones she really wanted. They weren't particularly
valuable, but I couldn't see that she'd come all this way for
the return of half a Jilly Cooper and a second-rate biography
of the Iron Lady. She riffled through them almost nervously.
The sight of the Dickens didn't dispel her anxiety and I felt
my stomach lurch with foreboding.
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"I'm sure—" she began, and flipped through the books
again. She seemed almost embarrassed. "There must be
another one. Wasn't there? A book of poetry? By"—she
hesitated, seemed to be about to say another name then
corrected herself—"Theo Wood?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. These were the only books Simon brought
over."
The woman's nervousness seemed to step up a notch.
"Oh! No, that can't be right. The book must be here
somewhere." She spun on a flat-loafered heel as though the
360-degree turn would enable her to spot Theo flashing
guiltily from a high shelf. "It—he—I mean, Theo Wood was—
is—he was a relative, you see. The book, it's quite important
to me."
Oh God, now I felt guilty. But there wasn't time to rush
back home and get it. Hell, I'd post it to her tomorrow—after
I'd photocopied Theo's picture. "I'm really sorry. I'll have
another look around tonight, after we've closed."
The woman handed me a small square of card. "This is my
address and number and everything," she almost whispered.
"Please, if you could. Only it really is terribly important, you
see, that I get this book back."
Isabelle Logan her name was, apparently. The address I
only glanced at, Charlton Hawsell, a village with an Exeter
postcode. "It's probably just got mixed in with books from
somewhere else. It'll turn up." Okay, I'd post it this evening.
The library did photocopies and they didn't shut til six.
She smiled tightly. "Maybe you're right, Mrs...er."
"Ms.," I said firmly. "Ms. Hunter. Alys. With a 'y'."
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Mrs. Logan gave a deep sigh, reminiscent of mine earlier
that morning, and I saw Jace throw a black-eyed glance of
concern across at us. I half expected her to come over and
recommend "new clothe", but she carried on shelving until
Mrs. Logan took her leave.
"Now, why," I asked Jace, "do you think she put that book
in an auction, if she was going to miss it so desperately?"
"Perhaps it have secret message in code." Jace leaned
against the counter, despite the ominous creaking it
immediately set up. "She needs it to find family treasure."
"Have you been dusting the Conan Doyle section again?"
The rest of the day dragged itself past like a hypochondriac
relative. At lunchtime Jace and I walked the streets of York
and I bought a green dress from a tiny branch of Help the
Aged I'd never noticed before. It bore a well-known
designer's label and had hardly ever been worn. To Jace's
slight jealousy, it fitted me perfectly. She came away with
three duvet covers and a CD rack.
Maybe Jace was right and there was some direct inverse
proportion between the feeling of happiness and the amount
of money one had in the bank, I thought as I climbed the two
flights of stairs to the flat that evening. But no, that couldn't
be right, otherwise I'd be perpetually ecstatic. Perhaps it was
just having something new that made me so cheerful at
finding Florence lounging on the sofa and Piers draped
picturesquely in Grainger's favourite chair. They were
listening to something which sounded like drum 'n' bass
recorded in an abattoir marshalling yard.
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"What've you bought, Mum?" Florence raised her head half
an inch from the sofa, a cross between ethereal as a ghost
and a right little madam. "Is it for me?"
"No. It's for me." Piers was grinning rather inanely and
there was a slight tinge of blush receding from his skin. I
hoped I hadn't caught them out in some illegal activity. "How
long have you been in?"
"Not long. Is it something I can borrow?"
"No." I sniffed suspiciously but could only catch the
fleeting aroma of eau de Grainger.
"I don't smoke, if that's what you're thinking," Florence
