Telling Lies to Alice (20 page)

“They’ve gone.”

“Clever girl.” Jack let go of the dog and stood up.

Eustace rushed towards me and I sat down on the floor and hugged him. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay, I won’t let him hurt you . . . Jack, please put the gun down. He’s shaking.”

“He’s not the only one.” Jack put the gun in his pocket. “Can I have a drink?”

I looked across the room and then down at the dog, who had his chin on my knee. The cupboard seemed a long way away. “I don’t want . . . You won’t . . .”

“He’ll be fine.” Jack sat down at the table. “I won’t move from here. Go on, be a sweetheart and find me some decent booze.”

I picked myself off the floor and went across the room, Eustace at my heels. It felt like walking along a tightrope. I looked at the dusty remains of Lenny’s drinks cabinet.
Scotch, Canadian, Bourbon, Rye
. . . How could I pour them down the sink without Jack noticing?
Irish, Gin, Vodka, Rum
. . . “Brandy?” I held up the bottle.

“Good idea,” said Jack, as if I’d suggested it. “Have one yourself,” he added. “You look as if you could do with it.”

I poured for both of us and sat down on the sofa. After a moment, Eustace landed beside me with a flump. “That’s better, isn’t it?” I said, stroking him. He curled up and watched Jack warily from under his eyebrows.

“Bottoms up!” Jack raised his glass. “You did great, Alice. I’m surprised how well you lie.”

We drank in silence for a few minutes. The brandy hurt my throat. Jack produced cigarettes, lit two, and handed one to me. My fear was starting to turn to anger—how could he be so calm, so offhand about what he’d just done? I struggled to control my voice. “Why are you doing this, Jack?”

“I don’t know. I’m fucked up. I’m sorry, Alice. When you said you’d talked to Val, I just thought . . .”

“I said it wasn’t the police. I
told you
.”

“I just . . . I panicked, that’s all.”

“What are you doing with a gun?”

“Oh, it’s just . . . you know.”

“No, Jack, I
don’t know
. You don’t just produce a lethal weapon and say it’s nothing. You could have killed me, or any of us. It’s dangerous, for Christ’s sake.”

“I told you, I’m fucked up.” He picked up the bottle. “Want some more?”

“No. You’ve got to go to the police, Jack.”

“I can’t.” Jack poured more brandy into his glass, drained it, and shook his head. “It’s all gone too far.”

“What’s gone too far? Look, none of this has anything to do with me, and I don’t—”

“Oh, yes it has, Bunny Alice. You’re part of this, whether you like it or not.”

“No, it
hasn’t
. This is your problem, and you need to sort it out. You can’t blame me for any of it. I was fine, Jack, I was enjoying my life, and then you just come along—I didn’t invite you—and then . . . all this . . . and . . .” I could feel my eyes filling up. I put my glass down and dug in my pockets for a tissue.

“Hey!” Jack stood up. Eustace shot off the sofa and into the hall.

“You frightened him.”

“He’ll be all right. He’s a
dog,
for Christ’s sake.”

“I love him.” The tears stung my face. I scrubbed at them with the back of my hand.

“I know . . . What have you done with my handkerchief?”

“Oh . . . over there.” I flapped a hand at the dresser. “On the . . . thing.”

“Right.” He fetched it and sat down beside me. “Here you are. Now, then. That’s better, isn’t it?”

“No,” I sobbed into the handkerchief, “no, it bloody well isn’t.”

“It’s not that bad . . .” I felt Jack move his arm and leant forward to stop him putting it round my shoulders.

“It’s us against the world, Alice.” He got up again, went to the window, drew the curtains, and sat back down. “Isn’t this cosy?”

“Cosy?”
I stared at him.

He smiled at me. “I could live here. I might even get used to that old dog of yours eventually.”

“What are you talking about,
live here
? You’ve just threatened me with a gun, remember?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t . . . You know that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Alice . . . You know me, I lose my temper, but . . .”

“You meant it. You meant it before, as well.”

“Hey, come on.” My shoulders tensed as he put his arm round them. My whole body felt raw. “Kiss me.”

“Don’t, Jack.”

“It’s all
right
.” He didn’t move. I didn’t believe what he’d said about not using the gun, and I didn’t want to upset him in case he took it out of his pocket again, so I didn’t move, either.

“Were you really happy?” he asked.

“When?”

“What you said before. About enjoying your life.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I was getting on with it, and that was . . .” I mopped my eyes.

Jack pulled me towards him so that my head was resting on his chest and tightened his grip on my shoulder to keep it there. My whole upper body was skewed uncomfortably and his linen jacket scraped my bruised cheek. He put the fingers of his free hand under my chin and tilted my face up to his. “Sorry I hit you. Does it hurt much?”

“I’ll live.”

Bad choice of words. I glanced down at the bulge in his jacket pocket. Wrong side, unfortunately. If it had been the pocket next to me, perhaps . . . I suddenly wondered if the gun was still cocked. Could it just go off of its own accord—if he knocked it or something?

“I’ve made your jacket wet.” I edged away from him, but he didn’t let go of my shoulder.

“A few tears won’t hurt it. Come on, dry your eyes. We’ve got to think.”

“We? You need
help,
Jack.”

“You
can
help me, Alice.” He stroked my hair. “You’ve got such a big heart . . . all these creatures you look after . . . surely there’s room for me as well?”

“Jack . . .” I tried to pull away from him, but he hung on to me.

“No, it’s all right, it’s all right . . . Come on . . . Tell me what you said to your—to Jeff.”

“He wasn’t there.”

“Has he got one of those machines that record messages?”

“No,” I lied.

“Okay. What about Val?”

“Just . . . you were upset, that’s all.”

“How did she sound?”

“Angry. She didn’t want to talk to me.”

“That’s not surprising. She’s always had a thing about you.”

“Why? She hardly knows me.”

I felt Jack shrug. “Christ knows.”

I wondered if I could pick his pocket. Sitting down, there was no way to get to the gun without making it obvious, and I could hardly follow him round the kitchen if he got up . . . All the same, I’d have a better chance. And if he’d had a few he’d be less likely to notice. I knew it was dangerous, but I couldn’t think what else to do.

His glass was empty. He won’t stop me if I get up to give him a drink, I thought.

“More brandy?” I said, and wriggled out from under his arm.

“Aye thang yow. God, I
hate
Arthur Askey.”

I handed over the bottle and sat down at the table. Jack refilled his glass and patted the sofa. “Come back.”

“In a minute.”

“Val did burn that tape, you know. In the incinerator.” He grinned. “I told her she ought to set fire to it and chuck it over the fence. Revenge for that dildo old Tweed Tits lobbed at us. That’s a great story, it really is . . .”

“I’ve heard it. Lenny told me.”

“Oh yes, so he did. Your first date, wasn’t it? That’s going back a bit . . .”

“How do you know?”

“Because he told me, Bunny Alice. He told me what fun it was and how much you’d laughed and how sweet you were for being so upset about his dad. . . . That was another great story, of course. . . .”

“It was
horrible
. That stuff killed him eventually.”

“Killed who?”

“His father. The phosphorus, or whatever it was.”

“Is that what he told you?”

I nodded. “Industrial disease.”

“Lenny’s dad died ’cause he was an al-co-hol-ic, darling,” said Jack. “Like his son.”

“Then why . . . ?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Sympathy. Works every time.”

“I meant later on.”

Jack looked thoughtful. “My guess is, he wanted the old boy to have a bit of dignity. Didn’t want to remember him like that . . . And it was the
way
he died, as well . . . He was in the kitchen when he had the stroke, you see, and he fell with his head in the dog bowl, where it had its water. It was quite a big dog they had, and it was one of those plastic washing-up things, you know . . . three, four inches of water—he drowned. That was how they found him. Facedown in the dog bowl. I mean, what a way to go.”

“He could have told me. . . .”

“No . . .” Jack shrugged. “It was all too close to home. I mean, what did you expect him to say? ‘When I grow up I’m going to pickle myself like Pater’? Where are my cigarettes?” He got up and began wandering around the kitchen, singing, “I don’t know where he’s going, but when he gets there I’ll be glad,/I’m following in Father’s footsteps—Yes!—I’m following the dear—old—dad. God, this place is a tip. Where—are—my—bloody—
cigarettes
?”

“I don’t know. Where you left them.”

“Upstairs.” He looked at me with loaded eyes and shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t, Bunny Alice. Where I go, you go.” His hand went into his pocket.
That
pocket. “Come on. You first.”

We went upstairs. His room was a mess. Dirty clothes were strewn over the floor, dotted with ashtrays, empty glasses, and bottles of pills. The bedclothes were pulled back and the bottom sheet rucked and stale. Susie’s urn was up by the pillows. I looked at Jack in his crumpled suit, and had an image of him lying on his side on the bed, fully clothed, cradling it in his arms. Unbearable—I turned away and my eye caught the green shoe bag, empty and limp, hanging from a hook behind the door. Perhaps the gun had been inside it.

The cigarettes were on the chest of drawers. Jack picked them up and stuck them in his pocket—the other pocket—then looked down at the bed. “Wait.” He grabbed hold of the top sheet, dragged it over the urn, and tucked it in clumsily.

“Shall I do the other side?”

I thought he hadn’t heard me, but after a moment he said, “No, leave it. Go.”

We went back downstairs to the kitchen. I sat at the kitchen table with my head in my hands while Jack drank more brandy and walked about, lifting things up and putting them down again for no apparent reason.
Do something,
said a little voice in my mind.
You’re on your own. No one’s going to rescue you. Do something.
Like what? I felt exhausted.

Jack sat down opposite me and leant forward, arms on the table. “Lenny raved about you, you know. Mind you, he usually did, the first time. Oh,” he said stagily, “I forgot. It wasn’t the first time, was it? I believe your first coupling took place in a haystack. Very appropriate, I always thought.”

“Jack,” I said through gritted teeth, “this isn’t
fair
.”

“You can say that again, Bunny Alice. I know all your little secrets, you see . . .”

“Stop it.”

“It was all your idea, you know.”

“Rubbish.” I looked up. “You keep saying it’s all my fault and my idea and I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you remember? Your first date with Lenny—once you’d been introduced, I mean—you suggested it.”

“Suggested what?” As I was saying it, I heard Lenny’s voice in my head:
Have you done that? Been in bed with two men at the same time?
And I’d said—oh, God—I’D SAID,
No, do you want to try it?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated.

“You
do
remember, don’t you?”

“No!” I’d just
said
it, that was all. I hadn’t wanted to
do
it. It was just . . . conversation. People say things all the time, don’t they, and it doesn’t mean . . . “I’d just thought, you and Lenny, you know . . . how you shared your girlfriends, and I didn’t know . . . I thought that was what he meant, but he was really shocked when I said it. But it wasn’t as if I was suggesting anything, just . . . Oh, for God’s sake! If I’d have known it was going to be such a big deal I’d have kept my mouth shut.”

“Hoist with your own petard, darling. You gave us the idea.”

“You don’t need me to put ideas into your head, Jack. And as for filming it, you dreamt that up all by yourself.”

“We didn’t.”

“Oh, what, so you ended up in bed with two other people and a movie camera by accident? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

“We didn’t know we were being filmed.”

“What did you think the camera was?” I asked. “A hat stand?”

Jack sighed. “We couldn’t see it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Two-way mirror. Oldest trick in the book.”

“So you weren’t . . . so . . .” I had this huge sense of relief—until I remembered that bright, triumphant smile. “Kitty knew, didn’t she?”

Jack nodded emphatically, his eyes wide. “Oh,
she
knew.”

I stared at him. “Then . . . you mean she . . . Oh, Jack . . .
No.
”

“Oh,
yes.
She really stitched us up.”

“Lenny never . . . not a word . . . I had no idea.”

“She threatened us.
News of the World, Sunday People
. . .”

“They wouldn’t.”

“They bloody well would. We were on television then, remember? Prime-time viewing.”

“So . . . you gave her money?”

“No choice.”

“Did you tell Findlater?”

“No.”

“But he’d have understood, wouldn’t he? I mean, that’s always been a risk for
them,
hasn’t it, someone finding out, and he was your agent, surely he’d have known what to do—got a lawyer, an injunction . . . I don’t know, there must have been something he could have done . . .”

Jack cleared his throat. “We did talk about it.”

“But you just said—”

“No, I mean Lenny and I. We talked about it. We were going to tell him.”