Submersion (30 page)

‘Sorry?’

‘What were you thinking then?’

‘Oh, nothing, Billy.’

‘You do know something, don’t you? Was there a row?’

‘A row?’

‘A fight, you know?’

‘Your father didn’t get into fights, Billy.’

‘What about with Mother?’

‘Your mother? What’s your mother got to do with this?’

‘Well, she was there, when he left. She could have stopped him, she could have-.’

‘She was asleep, Billy,’ he said, quietly. Now he was checking my face for clues of something. ‘He left in the night, Billy, and no one had a chance to stop him.’

He didn’t know, I thought. He really didn’t know.
They rowed,
I wanted to say.
I heard them and then he disappeared into the night. Vanished.
Sometimes I preferred my version of events to the one Tilly had suggested.
So she’s lied to you. Neither of us were asleep and there was something on the floor. Something she had to clear up.
Blood, I was certain. His blood, I was beginning to believe. Not wanting to, but it was becoming hard to ignore. Taking a moment to pick through what Uncle Jessie had said, a question came to me.

‘Where did he work?’

‘Where did he
work
?’ my uncle repeated, surprised by this line.

‘You said you checked his work, so who was his boss.’

And that was the moment he gave something away he didn’t mean to. His face paled a little.

‘Oh, no one,’ he replied, lamely.

‘I don’t believe you,’ I returned, boldly. At last, it seemed I had something and I wasn’t about to let it go. ‘You do remember and you don’t want to tell me.’

‘Billy, it’s nothing-.’

‘Then why don’t you just tell me?’

‘It’s not important.’

‘I’ll just ask around. At school. Go back to Mother, Aunt Agnes, Grandad Ronan. I’m sure someone will tell me eventually.’

‘He didn’t work for anyone you’d want to go asking about,’ he eventually answered, hoping it would be enough to calm my inquisitiveness. It wasn’t.

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s a secret,’ he tried, hoping that might work, but it inadvertently gave me my answer.
It’s a secret.
Hadn’t someone else fed me that line about their employer – Mother?

‘Monty Harrison,’ I said aloud and the shock in Uncle Jessie’s face confirmed this.

‘No,’ he insisted, but not convincingly and he knew it. ‘Billy, listen to me. Don’t go poking about, you hear me? Monty Harrison is not a good man.’

Uncle Jessie saw the shock in my face as he said this.
Monty Harrison is not a good man.
Was that why Mother’s working for him was a secret?

‘He’s a dangerous man,’ he continued, without questioning my reaction. ‘And I found nothing when I went looking. No suggestion of anything bad. So, you just keep quiet and keep your nose out.’

But I still had questions.

‘What did he do for him?’

‘What?’

‘His job. What was Father’s job with Mr Harrison?’

This time Uncle Jessie kept everything shut away and held his features neutral.

‘He worked for him,’ he said, cold enough to make it clear this was the end of our conversation.

I let it go. I had another line of enquiry now. Uncle Jessie had led me there himself. Tilly Harrison, Monty’s niece. Mother wasn’t very happy about my friendship with her, given that Monty was
her
secret and being friends with his niece might make her a little nervous that the truth might come out. Yet, now Tilly had stopped ringing me at home, Mother seemed to have forgotten we were friends at all. Now this assumption of hers was going to come in useful.

The rest of my visit at Uncle Jessie’s was a little awkward. He tried to tell me a few tales about Father – fulfilling the exercise that Aunt Agnes had suggested I pursue with him – but he could tell I wasn’t so enthusiastic for tales of boyhood exploits. After a couple of games of cards, he announced he had
a bit of work to sort out
and I took this as my cue to leave.

‘Just don’t go snooping,’ he warned, as I stepped into my boat.

‘I won’t,’ I lied, steaming up my gas mask a little with hot breath.

Then I rowed myself away, thinking about my next move.

Thinking about how I’d get Tilly to take me to her uncle’s and exactly what I’d do and say when I got there.

But my opportunity didn’t come as quickly as I’d hoped. I’d visited my uncle on a Saturday, so that just meant Sunday and then back to school on the Monday. But there were some problems with the electrics at school and we couldn’t attend for several days. We got to find this out really quickly, as Uncle Jessie and Tristan were asked to be part of the team who came in to help fix it. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to help as they had other commitments – fixing up a church, according to Mother – but they still broke the news about school to us. As Mother was back doing her secret work for Monty Harrison, I had to stay with Great Aunt Penny and Great Uncle Jimmy during the day time.

After our trip to the old shop last time, Mother was a little reluctant to send me, and Great Aunt Penny seemed as equally reluctant to receive me, but after some whispered instructions –
he’s not to go with you, under any circumstances
– I was put in their care once again.

I tried to suggest I might accompany Mother to work – another opportunity to get face to face with Monty Harrison and find out just how bad he was – but she was quick to dismiss this.

‘And have you under my feet? Oh no, Mr Harrison wouldn’t like that. And neither would I!’

And so I returned to the tenth floor of North Courts, the crumbling high rise that housed my great-aunt and -uncle.

From the minute I arrived, Great-Aunt Penny treated me with obvious scorn. She had a cross look about her the whole time and rarely spoke to me, unless I asked a question, and even then her answers were short and sharp.

As with my last time at their flat, Great-Uncle Jimmy spent most of his time away from the flat
on business.
This
business
I correctly assumed was pottering about in their old shop, clearing away the dust and cobwebs, checking the artefacts they’d stored away from the water for damp and decay. On the third day, he came home mid-morning in a small panic and an equally small drama was whispered in the kitchen. This time, I stayed where I was instructed – in their lounge, playing with the small box of toys. Eventually, my great-aunt came into the room and announced she was accompanying her husband to the shop to
sort out a recurring problem.

‘Are you leaving me here?’ I asked.

Her eyes narrowed instantly. ‘Yes!’ she spat, and in doing so revealed the source of her contempt. My last visit here had landed her in Mother’s bad books – taking me to the shop had broken some rule. Just having me here again had been enough to stir up all the associated ill feeling. ‘We’ll lock you in so you come to no harm!’

I was a little alarmed by this - being trapped on the tenth floor of this crumbling tower didn’t strike as particularly safe.

‘What if there is a fire?’ I asked, but Great-Aunt Penny was relentless in her resolve to imprison me regardless.

‘Then jump!’ she said, pointing a wicked-witch’s finger at the living room window.

I heard a gentle ticking off from Great-Uncle Jimmy in the hallway –
Penny, remember he’s just a boy –
before the door was opened, shut, locked and I heard the muffled rumble of the stinky, steel lift plummeting them downwards.

I gave them five minutes – just to feel certain of no imminent return for something forgotten – and then I began a careful search through their belongings.

I started in the most obvious place – their bedroom. I was careful when rifling – I didn’t want to leave a trace of my snooping. A chest of drawers and matching bedside cabinets gave nothing away – jewellery my great-aunt had kept from a bygone era of relative wealth, underwear that made me feel guilty as my fingers touched the lace, a few old cards from birthdays and other occasions, which I feared might crumble as I brushed against them. But little else. Behind the mirrored sliding doors of their built-in wardrobe, I suspected I might find something hidden amongst the colourful flumes of all the glamorous dresses Great-Aunt Penny stored there. But again, there was nothing. The dresses made me pause, thinking of Elinor trying them on and trotting around in the oversized high heels.

‘Where would you look Elinor?’ I asked myself, thinking inside: are you really dead, or are you missing, like Aunt Agnes and Tristan insist. Or did you simply go looking for something, like me, and go missing?

Giving up on the main bedroom, I tried their spare room next. The cupboard where Great-Uncle Jimmy kept his priceless toy cars in their pristine boxes and his unlabelled tins of food, also housed a thin wallet containing some papers. I looked inside this and found a couple of official looking letters that appeared to be about the
lease on the shop,
which meant nothing to me. There were also some certificates in a white envelope: the
lease
that had been referred to in the letters; a driving licence in Great-Uncle Jimmy’s name; and four birth certificates: one each for my great-aunt and –uncle, and two others in the names of Ethan and Joshua. I checked the dates of birth on all. Great-Aunt Penny was much older than she let on and was, in fact, a year older than her husband. The certificates in the boys names revealed they would be in their thirties now and two other interesting facts that surprised me: they were twins and they were the offspring of Great-Aunt Penny, but the father’s name was marked as unknown.

I stared down at them for several minutes in complete shock. I knew nothing of these cousins. There were no photographs – either on display or tucked away – and there had never been any mention, not even a whisper about them. This was a dark, hidden secret, pushed deep, deep down. And I knew something instantly – they were dead. They were dead and they were Great-Aunt Penny’s greatest shame. Illegitimate children were to be
scorned upon
– I’d heard her say something like that to Mother about Elinor, when they didn’t know I was listening. And yet, hidden in the closet, was that exact scenario. That very shame.

For a minute, I felt bad about my judgement and allowed myself a little sympathy for my harsh aunt. She had suffered, no doubt, and this was the reason for how she was, how she behaved. My own shame pricking my conscience, I put the paperwork back inside its envelope and wallet, and put it back where I found it - hoping it was the right way round and that there would be no indication that the secret had been disturbed.

The bath and living rooms gave up nothing of interest. A bathroom cabinet revealed some creams for sores on body parts I tried not to think about, and the living area I knew inside-out, having spent so many hours searching through it previously for boredom-breakers. That left me with the kitchen. Largely, it had little to offer up. My Great-Aunt’s cupboards – and they were hers, as she was often heard telling Great-Uncle Jimmy to
get out of my kitchen,
so I knew this for a fact – her cupboards were laid out as if on display in a museum, or a posh shop. The plates were gleaming and neatly stacked, the glasses sparkled and were lined up like soldiers, napkins and tea-towels were folded in dust-free drawers. I wondered if Mother had inherited her own domestic skills from her aunt’s side of the family. This standard of orderliness was found in every nook and cranny of the kitchen – from the cutlery draw to the dry food cupboard – apart from one place: a small drawer at the far end of the kitchen.

This particular drawer was crammed with an assortment of bits and bobs and I had the distinct impression that maybe this was the one part of the room that belonged to Great-Uncle Jimmy. Pencils, pens without lids, tiny pads of paper bound together on metal springs, a rubber, a thimble, a bag of rubber bands, odd buttons, a tiny rusty spanner, nails, picture hooks, a bit of lint, a packet of rusting batteries still in their plastic seal, a tin with
Vaseline
written on the front – the drawer was crammed with a mess of unrelated items. I kept ferreting through, rumbling and jangling my way through this small sea of intrigue and junk. And then I eventually found something – a set of keys, right at the back, pushed away and forgotten. They had a plastic, oblong fob attached to them, with a piece of paper slipped into it, labelling them. When I read the label, I felt a shiver down my spine. Just two words were written on it, but they said a lot. They spoke of promise, and they told me, instinctively, that I was meant to find them. After hours of interviewing and searching, I’d finally found something. It
had
to be that. Those two words?
Spare
and
shop.
I’d found a spare set of keys to their old, mouldy shop.

I knew my next move was wrong, and there was a good chance I’d get caught at some point, but I did it all the same – I put the keys in my pocket.

When my great-aunt and –uncle returned, they found me back in the lounge, playing with the box of toys, looking as bored as I possibly could. My aunt’s scorn from earlier appeared to have lessened a little.