Such Men Are Dangerous (14 page)

“Oh, we’ve got so much to tell you!” exclaimed her mother. “But first we must hear all
your
news.”

“We must?” said Josh. There was only the merest suggestion of a question mark but he shouldn’t have introduced even that. He started things and then—with everyone looking at him—he had to do his utmost to pretend he hadn’t. “That would be really nice,” he said, grateful that at least he had resisted that other small piece of sabotage: the strong temptation to give a heartfelt sigh.

“Yes,” said Dawn, and he sensed the air of a woman who wanted to leave the best till last; for which, in fact, he was not altogether unthankful, even if it did mean that they were then back with Janice’s promotion of Don, and Don’s promotion of himself. Don laughed about everything, expressing manliness, simplicity, good nature at each new boring detail Janice trotted out, details to do with their meeting, their initial thoughts on one another, the things they’d both said, Janice’s frequent returns to the pool, their first date, everything they’d eaten upon it, even the piece of Turkish Delight served up with their coffee. (“What colour was it?” asked Josh.) But worse than that—far worse than that—as well as being the strong, silent, amiably indulgent male, Don was also sickeningly proprietorial, with an easy, familiar bossiness that extended from Janice even to her mother and brothers; and with a way of touching Janice, repeatedly touching her, on the shoulders, on the arms, on the back of her neck, of brushing his hairy knuckles up and down her cheeks, that increasingly pulled tighter, with each slow turn of the rollers, the already lacerating thread of tension in Josh’s stomach, chest and genitals and finally brought him to the point of feeling that if it happened again—no,
when
it happened again—he would actually have to leave the room and relieve himself by doing violent exercise or causing violent damage or committing violent self-abuse.

It came as no surprise, of course, to learn they were engaged. Josh would have preferred to hear they were already living together; that at least the consummation had been got out of the way, beyond all doubt; and that one no longer had to think, therefore, that on such-and-such a date and at such-and-such a time…

The only surprise, in fact, was that Dawn should feel the way she did. (It couldn’t be merely those two bottles of champagne they’d brought with them.) Dawn didn’t approve of macho men. Josh didn’t regard
himself
as macho but still these days she nagged at him because she said his T-shirts and jumpers and jeans were too tight; because, when his shirts were open-necked, he left too many of their buttons undone; because he wouldn’t wear pyjamas. (He resisted her, categorically. She was never going to change
him
into her own brand of nonentity!) But now the thought of this smirky, sweaty-palmed Lothario, with dark hair fringing the base of his throat above the top of the crewneck sweater (he probably spent hours in training it to do that), the thought of him smugly soiling their daughter’s cool and virginal young body with that clammy, tacky, suppurating contagion of his own: apparently this did nothing to disgust her, despite her saintly views. Yes, he himself wanted to be sick, whilst
she
talked of wedding plans and trousseaux and of meeting his family and of where they were going to live and seemed nothing but delighted to think that within six weeks, six
weeks
, they would all be standing on the pavement outside St Matthew’s throwing handfuls of confetti over the happy pair.

“Oh, praise the Lord!” she said. “Praise the Lord! Another lovely thing to be able to tell Simon! And the church hall, too, will be the perfect place for the reception, that part of the hall named after Mr Apsbury, because we’ll be able to think of him standing there in spirit, feeling so very pleased to see the young girl he prepared for confirmation returning four years later as a bride.” She went on like this, thought Josh, for roughly a further four years herself.

The reception was going to be paid for by Don’s parents. “So now you mustn’t worry about that, either of you,” declared their future son-in-law. “And I don’t want to hear one single word of gratitude. We all know how it is, you see. And, as I told you, my father’s doing all right and always likes to share with others far less fortunate.” His father was one of the head buyers in a large department store.

Josh felt momentarily obliging. He didn’t let Don hear one single word of gratitude.

Not so Dawn.

“Well, I don’t mind saying,” she didn’t mind saying (at some length), “that that would be a great anxiety taken off our shoulders, even though we’ve found, time after time after time, that the Lord unfailingly provides.”

“Though why must he always shop at Woolworth’s?” wondered Josh, aloud. “Doesn’t it give forebodings of a very cut-price kind of heaven? But talking of money, what sort of dazzling future does the career of a baths attendant in Sheffield offer these days?”

Don laughed his good rich laugh.

“Swimming instructor,” he said.

“Forgive me.”

“Naturally it’s only a stopgap. I’m always on the lookout. But in this day and age I feel you’re lucky to have anything at all that keeps you from spinelessly relying on the dole queue. Heck, sir, that wasn’t meant to sound offensive. I wasn’t meaning—”

“Of course you weren’t,” said Dawn. “And, good gracious, this isn’t the kind of household where everybody has to mind their p’s and q’s”—she smiled at her husband—“well, is it, dear? Besides, Josh, I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young. When you’re young and just getting married you live on love. It’s the happiest diet in the world. The happiest and the healthiest.”

“Yes,” said Don. He nodded and grinned and stroked one of his massive forearms. “Haven’t I mentioned? I intend to live entirely off my wife!”

Janice said, “Anyway, Mum, that’s enough about us now!” Though she didn’t look as if she actually believed that. “What’s this good news you said
you’ve
got? You mustn’t keep it from us a second longer!”

Dawn wet her lips. Her own eyes shone almost as much as her daughter’s. “Well, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. Not for the time being, anyhow.”

“Ooh, Mum! Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Me, too,” appended Don, pushing back his chair and crossing his long, large and no doubt coarsely hairy legs in comfortable anticipation; a willing and absorbed conspirator.

“You see, it all started last Wednesday afternoon, when these two monsters were coming home from school…”

No, Josh didn’t enjoy his lunch. He didn’t enjoy the hour or so preceding it, nor the four or five hours that followed it. There had been only two mildly pleasurable parts of the day: the first, when he himself had been preparing the meal (for Dawn, of course, had gone to church, taking the boys with her) and the cooking had turned out well—though not so well, he thought, as if he’d had the courage to put apple in the pie instead of rhubarb; and the second, when after the visit was over and his daughter had driven away with her chosen ravisher he’d taken three-pounds-seventy-five out of his wife’s housekeeping tin and had strode off to get as drunk as three-pounds-seventy-five would allow. Then, incredibly, somewhere between his third and fourth pint, the thickly encompassing fog of misery began to lift and through the rapidly disbanding eddies a sudden glimmer of light, both shocking and supportive, started tremulously to focus his attention—as, indeed, he told the little Indian fellow with the serious eyes and the sparse goatee who sat about a yard away from him along the plastic-covered bench.

“The thing is,” he said, “I’ve got to get away within the next six weeks! Imperative, my friend,
imperative
! Within the next six days, if possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It could be possible.”

The little Indian nodded—and glanced towards the door. But he quickly looked back again, and with the same expression of polite interest.

“I mean, consider it like this. Billy goes off to school tomorrow, as per usual. Well, people are bound to notice, aren’t they? It
is
quite noticeable. And what does the boy say then? Are you going to encourage him to lie? Is that what his mother would want? Is that what the holy vicar would want? After all, a lie is a lie is a lie, wouldn’t you agree, even if you use no words to speak it.”

He paused and looked expectant. “Yes, sir,” said the Indian, gravely.

“
You
wouldn’t encourage him to lie?”

“No, sir.”

“So the news is going to break, anyway. Surely you can see that?
With
me or without me. Even by tomorrow night the air could be thick with speculation; speculation leads to rumour—‘Rumour is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures’—one can’t approve of that. It’s dirty. It’s debasing. It hasn’t got the drama of a cleancut scoop. Nor the honesty. Nor the money. Pounds, shillings, pence, my friend. (I don’t mean to confuse you.) My escape fund; that’s what I’ll call it. Escape to happiness. To a new life. To love.
Comprenez-vous
?”

“Excuse me, sir, I’m very sorry but—”

“Oh, by the way,
King Henry IV
, I believe. Yet maybe you knew that already? In which case I apologize, how patronizing, now he’s got me doing it too! Just don’t ask who says it, though, or quite where it comes in.”

“Excuse me, sir, I’m very sorry but I have to go. My wife is, most happily, expecting our first baby.”

“Of course. I understand. That’s very good. But tell me just one thing.” Josh held on for a moment to the fellow’s dark and scrawny wrist, beneath the clean white cuff. “
The News of the World
, would you say? No. The name appeals but then we’d have to wait another week.
Daily Express
?
Daily Mail
? Which of these would you consider the most suitable?
The Mirror
, maybe?”

The man murmured something unintelligible. Josh asked him to repeat it. He did so, sorrowfully.

“Oh?
The Evening Telegraph
? Good God! No, no! Nothing local. Not if you mean to make a splash, my friend…Why, next you’ll even be suggesting the parish magazine!”

He let the Indian go. His fingers had left small livid marks on the brown skin.

“My congratulations to you and your wife. Be happy with your first baby. I hope that it’s a boy.”

(But was that really any better? Boys grew up and brought home nubile and attractive girls and that was another thing which would be coming his way before too long. Twice over. Or…correction: would have been, if he’d been wimp enough merely to sit around and wait for it. But no, sir! That is
not
my baby! He would hear about these branchings-out and blossomings from afar; care of a rich and fully satisfying life of his own, thank you very much.)

He’d fulfilled his aim: he was at least a little drunk. He must go home now, he decided; home to his very boring wife, home to his very
pious
wife. (He giggled a bit. How many of them were there? It was a harem, a harem full of extremely
dull
women. But it was just a little sad, too, because once, twenty years ago, one of those wives had used to giggle a bit herself; enjoy a silly joke; even—whisper it, whisper it—one about
vicars
, or
God
, or the
Church
, or other crazy things like that. “It’s the happiest diet in the world,” she had said, “the happiest and the healthiest.” Unbelievable, not that she’d once thought that, but that she should now remember having done so and, remembering,
admit
it!) Well, he must now go home, he decided, and try to sleep on it. In the morning, after he had signed on at the jolly old employment exchange, with all its books and pictures and dance music and TV and its warmhearted air of welcome that invariably made you feel like somebody, somebody who mattered…after he had stepped in for a cosy little chat and a cup of coffee and a selection of chocolate biscuits, he would then go along to that big post office on the corner and ring—eenie, meenie, minie, mo—he didn’t yet know whom. But somebody somewhere would be made happy. He would reverse the charges.

Part Two

21

“Newsdesk.”

Afterwards, the thought that it could so easily have been someone else who answered…even on the warmest of nights that thought could still induce a shiver. (Paradoxically, there were times when her anguish made her cry out through her tears. “Why did it have to be
me
? Why
me
?”)

“I have a call from Scunthorpe, in South Humberside, Miss Coe. It’s reversed charges.” The new girl on the switchboard was endearingly punctilious about such things. Geraldine believed it worried her that the
Chronicle
should have to incur these costs, that people might be cynically exploiting its trusting good nature.

“All right. Thank you, Iris.”

“I’m putting you through.”

“Newsdesk. May I help you?”

“Well, I hope we can help each other.” A man’s voice. Youngish (though you could so often be mistaken about that), middle-class, none of the northern accent which she’d half expected. “I’m offering you a big exclusive scoop.”

Despite the boldness of the words, no doubt carefully rehearsed, the trace of nervousness she had detected in his first sentence was still apparent in his second. Because of it she held back the kind of retort she would otherwise have liked to make. She respected people’s nervousness.

“That sounds interesting.”

“But before I tell you, I want to know something.”

“Go on.”

“How much you’d be paying me for the information.”

Her respect began to diminish at the same time her instinct for a story suddenly began to stir.

“Well, that would depend. If it’s really as big as you say it is…”

“Thousands?” he asked, a little hoarsely.

“All I can tell you, Mr…” She wrote down his name. “All I can tell you, Mr Heath, is that it is…always…in theory…a possibility.” She pulled a face at Bob Clarke, who sat at right angles to her and who—alerted perhaps by something in her tone—had paused in his typing to wink at her. “If you could give me some idea of what the story is, obviously I’d be in a better position to judge.”