Started Early, Took My Dog (43 page)

‘Which orphanage did they send him to?’

‘Doesn’t matter, he’s been moved around.’ She got up abruptly and left a handful of coins on the table. ‘For the coffee,’ she said, as if Tracy might have thought the money was for something else.

Tracy paid for the coffee and checked her watch. She groaned inwardly, perhaps outwardly too. She had a party to go to.

Tracy’s parents were taking a leap into the unknown, attempting something that had never been attempted before in the Waterhouse household. They were throwing a party. The bungalow in Bramley was humming with tension.

Only a few years off retirement her father had been given ‘a significant promotion’ and, quite aberrantly, her parents had decided to celebrate in public. The invitation list was problematic as her parents had no friends as such, only acquaintances and neighbours and a few work colleagues of her father. Somehow or other they managed to scrape together a quorum.

The next dilemma was how to phrase the handwritten invitations in a way that would ensure that people left promptly at the end.
Drinks and snacks, 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm
was the wording finally decided on. ‘
The guests
’, her mother said, as if they were a dangerous breed of animal. Tracy was press-ganged into making an appearance. Her mother said, ‘You can invite a couple of friends if you like.’ ‘’S’all right,’ Tracy said. ‘I’ll come on my own.’

She arrived early and speared toothpicks, charged with pineapple and cubed cheese, into the pale green skull of a cabbage. When the guests arrived Tracy wandered around like a waitress with platters of vol-au-vents her mother had spent all afternoon stuffing with prawns or shredded chicken. There weren’t enough to go round and when they ran out her mother hissed, ‘Get the cheese straws from the kitchen. Hurry!’ As if she was asking for weapons reinforcements.

Dorothy Waterhouse had hoped that they would be able to hold the whole thing outside, on the newly laid concrete slabs of the patio. Tracy’s mother lived in fear that their previously orderly acquaintances would be transformed into a rowdy crowd under the influence of Tracy’s father’s rum punch, the main ingredient of which was not rum but orange squash.

To her mother’s disgust it had rained of course and everyone was crushed, elbows like chicken wings, into the newly extended (but not enough) living room. The banality of the occasion was depressing (
The builders didn’t try and rip you off then? . . . In my day you stood still when a hearse passed you . . . Someone said number 21 had been sold to a Paki family
.) Tracy filched a handful of cheese straws and escaped to the bathroom. Sent up a little prayer of thanks that she didn’t live here any more.

She put the toilet lid down and had a seat, munching her way through the cheese straws while she watched the rain streaming down the raindrop glass of the bathroom window. Wondered about that, raindrops on raindrop glass, seemed an excess of water in an already wet town. Heard the hollow word ‘orphanage’ in her brain. She could have given that kiddy a home. She should have taken him from that hospital bed, run away with him, given him the love he needed.

Tracy sighed and crammed the last bit of cheese straw into her mouth, brushed the flakes off her clothes and washed her hands. She had a sudden image of the cold, poky bathroom in the Lovell Park flat. There had been make-up scattered messily on a shelf. A plastic submarine lay beached in the grubby bathtub. Were Carol’s last thoughts for her son? She must have been afraid that he’d be killed as well.
What chance does he have?
Marilyn Nettles said.

In the kitchen her mother was unmoulding a temperamental charlotte russe. ‘Have to go out, Mum,’Tracy shouted down the hallway. She unhooked her lightweight summer mac from the hallstand and accelerated out of the house, her mother’s faint cries of protest following her down the garden path.

She traipsed through the rain, visiting every orphanage and care home in the book. None of them had heard of Michael Braithwaite, but, of course not, his name had been changed, according to Marilyn Nettles. She tried describing him,
Little boy, four years old, mother murdered
, but everywhere she went heads were shaken, doors were closed. Warrant card didn’t seem to help at all, positively hindered, in fact. It was ten o’clock at night when she finally got back to her own flat, soaked through to the bone. The party would be long over now, her mother would already have hoovered up every last crumb.

Linda Pallister had a Hillman Imp now, it seemed. Couldn’t drive it though because Tracy was standing in the road in front of it.

‘Tell me where he is, Linda. Tell me what he’s called.’

Linda rolled down the car window and said, ‘Go away, leave me alone or I’ll call the police.’

‘I am the police,’ Tracy said. ‘This uniform isn’t fancy-dress.’ Should have thumped her one. Should have pulled her fingernails out one by one until she told. But that was then.

Sacrifice

Saturday
The next thing he knew was best described as nothing. Jackson was in the pitch dark, he was paralysed and the air around him was as noxious as the netherworld. He had already died once in his life but it hadn’t resembled this at all. The first time round, after the train crash, it had been the classic white corridor scenario, complete with his dead sister and a sense of euphoria. He had gone, briefly, to a heaven, a heaven which had almost undoubtedly manifested itself as a result of oxygen deprivation to his brain. This time round he had apparently taken the staircase that went down the other way.

He drifted off, came to again, and realized that he wasn’t in fact paralysed but was trussed, not so much a turkey as an Egyptian mummy. His ankles were tightly bound, his hands were tied behind his back and his mouth was taped up. To begin with it was painful, then it was excruciatingly painful and then after a time the pain was replaced with a numbness which was worse, somehow. His head hurt but no more than you would expect if you had been kicked and punched in it, that is to say, a lot. He would be lucky to escape without brain damage.

Perhaps he would be lucky to escape at all. He wriggled, awkwardly, like a particularly incompetent worm, until his head butted up against a hard surface. Slowly, he manoeuvred his way round what turned out to be a disturbingly claustrophobic space, not much bigger than a coffin. An oddly shaped sarcophagus filled with something stinking.

In the course of his squirming it eventually dawned on Jackson that he was sharing air with food refuse, an aroma of chop suey and the indefatigable scent of chips and fried fish. He was entombed in some kind of large, commercial waste bin along with the collective leftovers of several fat-based local restaurants.
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died
. That would be because there really was a fly in here with him, buzzing irritably with the knowledge that it, too, couldn’t get out.

There was a certain relief in the realization. At least he hadn’t gone mad, nor had he gone to hell or turned into a giant worm. He had simply been knocked on the head by a couple of hulking thugs and dumped in a garbage bin.

The relief didn’t last long. He couldn’t shout for help, he couldn’t move – writhing didn’t really count – and had no way of escaping. And where was the dog, it didn’t seem to be in here with him. Was it lying hurt or maimed somewhere? Dog in jeopardy.

Then something worse happened. Much worse. The heavy engine sound of an industrial vehicle. The snarling of slow gears, hydraulic arms rising and falling, the careless clattering and comradely exchanges that all signalled the arrival of an early morning bin lorry. He struggled furiously, trying to rock the bin, but to no avail at all. He tried kicking with his bound feet but could barely make an impact. Nothing more than a low, desperate moan escaped beyond the barrier of tape across his mouth.

There were other bins parked nearby, he heard them being wheeled away towards the lorry, heard them being lifted, emptied, returned. Two of them. His was about to be the third. He heard one binman say to another, ‘Did you see
Top Gear
last night?’ and the other one replying, ‘No, the wife watches
Collier
. I need to get Sky Plus.
Collier
’s crap.’

Jackson could hear them, clear as a bell. He was inches away from them but incapable of attracting their attention. He had survived the Gulf, he had survived Northern Ireland and a devastating train crash and he was going to die like trash (exactly like trash, in fact), by being crushed to death in a bin lorry.

The wheelie-bin was suddenly jolted and he found himself being bumped and rumbled along towards his nemesis. Jackson in jeopardy.

This was it then.

The end.

Jackson caught the sound of a dog barking. Not just barking, yapping furiously, the kind of noise that drove people crazy if there was no let-up to it. There was no let-up. On and on, the dog barked. Yap, yap, yap. There was something familiar about it.

‘What is it?’ he heard one of the binmen say. ‘What are you trying to tell me, eh?’

‘What’s that you say, Skippy?’ another said, in a bad Australian accent. ‘Someone’s in trouble, d’you say?’

‘Me!’ Jackson roared silently.

Someone laughed and said, ‘Skippy’s a kangaroo, not a dog. It should be Lassie.’

‘This one’s a Laddie by the looks of him.’

He was going to die while all around him people were discussing the gender of a dog?

Daylight suddenly. So sharp it dazzled him. And fresh sea air. Light and air, all a man needed when you got right down to basics. And a faithful friend who wasn’t going to let you go to the great boneyard in the sky without kicking up a hell of a fuss.

‘Leave no man behind, eh?’ Jackson said to the dog as he staggered back to Bella Vista.

Tilly made herself an early morning cup of tea. The nice weather had broken and the rain was lashing against the little window of the kitchen. The clocks said ten past five and although Tilly could no longer feel entirely certain about what that meant, she was pretty sure it was the morning because she could hear Saskia snoring behind her bedroom door. Saskia denied that she snored, she was always muttering about the noise that Tilly made, ‘Gosh, Tilly, you were like an express train in a tunnel last night,’ or (overheard saying to Padma – there, Padma, remembered her name, no problem) ‘I can’t stand it, I’m getting no sleep, you know, it’s like sharing a house with a giant hog.’ Padma saying, ‘Have you tried earplugs, Miss Bligh?’

Cap’n Bligh, yes, sir. Or rather, ‘no, sir’, Tilly supposed, given the mutiny. Did you call a naval captain ‘sir’? Or ‘captain’?
HMS Pinafore
not much help with that. Would Saskia’s Guards lieutenant know? Military was military after all. What was his name? Saskia was the lieutenant’s woman. Tilly had a small part in that film, a servant of some kind. Lyme Regis, lovely place,
the young people were all wild to see Lyme
. Her favourite Austen.
Persuasion
. Her brain was like lace, delicate and full of holes. Or a christening shawl. White wool on black skin. Coddling.

Rupert, that was his name! Like Rupert Bear. She used to love getting those annuals at Christmas. Rupert and his friends. Bill the Badger, Ping-Pong the Pekinese (was that racist in some way?). Couldn’t remember the others. One Boxing Day she had done something that angered Father – who knew what, so many little things made him angry – and he had taken her new
Rupert
annual and torn the pages out one by one. Oh, dear God, would someone put a stop to all this. The memories, the words. Too many of them.

The lieutenant was arriving tonight, wasn’t he? That would explain the shepherd’s pie that was sitting mysteriously in the middle of the kitchen table.

The rain sounded as if someone was throwing buckets of water against the window. There was a grumble of thunder, like a sound effect.
On a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard
. She had played Miranda in an open-air production. Home Counties somewhere, couldn’t remember much about it, her heart hadn’t been in it the way it should have been because she was in love with Douglas. She’d been stuck in the wilds of Berkshire or Buckinghamshire, some Home Counties shire anyway, while Douglas was in London directing a play. He was fifteen years older than Tilly. She was only twenty, it was a lovely role – such sweet innocence – she hadn’t realized at the time that she would never play it again. She was Prospero now, poor old Tilly, breaking her staff, about to give it all up. The revels were ending. Sticky toffee pudding ending.

Of course,
that
was the summer that Phoebe stole Douglas. He was directing her in
Major Barbara
, you see. She was the youngest actress ever to play the role on the London stage.
The brightest new star of her generation
, critics said. The springboard for her glittering career. Tilly had never understood why Douglas hadn’t cast her in the role, she was just as good an actress as Phoebe, certainly no worse. Too late to ask him now. After that Phoebe got all the juicy roles, of course, Cleopatra, Duchess of Malfi, Nora Helmer.