THE SWAP.
by Antony Moore.
Prologue: Cornwall, 1982
'Superman One?' The 'odd boy' turned his face, never completely clean, towards the school building and Harvey watched his nose wrinkle as to a bad smell. 'Why would I want that?'Harvey gave a deep, exaggerated sigh; it wasn't as if he needed the deal.'I don't know. Who cares? I'll swap with someone else. It's just not my sort of thing really. Superman Superman's not so sharp, yeah? I like the Silver Surfer Silver Surfer. This is so old, it's the first one . . . Kids' stuff really.''So why would I swap?' The odd boy was plaintive and Harvey sighed again. Did he need to explain? Because you don't have friends to play with; because you want to be in with me; because it breaks up the tedium of the school day; because this'll give you something to carry and show to people that won't make them laugh at you, that'll actually be halfway acceptable in the classroom between eight forty-five and nine o'clock when everyone is just killing time, usually by killing you. Any of these things would be easily said, except when you are twelve even if you are sort of thinking them. So Harvey just shrugged and waved his hand. 'Up to you, in't it?''And you want this?' The odd boy put his hand to the thin piece of plastic pipe that he was wearing round him like a bandolier.'Not really. But I'll swap.' Harvey had seen the odd boy slashing the grass with it as he walked up the track from the road towards the school, seen the way it lopped off the heads of the grasses, sending the seedbags spinning into the air. He liked that: neat, even balletic destruction. Every boy's idea of beauty.'And if I say yes, that's it. I can't have it back?' The odd boy was being odder than usual and Harvey was losing interest fast. He wasn't a bully but he wasn't a bloody nanny either.'Of course not. Once you swap, you swap, you can't undo it.' He turned and began to make his way up the track that led to the back entrance to the school, a cart track really, overhung with great, untended cedars. 'But forget it, it's not worth it really. Who cares?' That was an expression Harvey was growing into. He'd started saying it last year when it had sounded unnatural and he had always expected someone to say 'well, you do of course'. But they never did, so he was growing into it. He felt that by next year, the start of his teens, it might suit him rather well. He had those sorts of feelings. And he sensed they set him apart: he kind of anticipated how things were going to be, he could see where he was going. Certainly he was different from classmates like Bleeder, the odd boy, who now trailed behind him up the path. Bleeder because of the nosebleeds and the scabs that always seemed to bedeck his body. Odd, for obvious reasons.'No, hang on. I'm not saying I won't.' Harvey heard the bleating need for a normal interaction in the odd boy's voice, the instant nostalgia for being treated with respect. He wondered vaguely if he'd done wrong. Mean to get his hopes up.'Look, you fucking freak, do you want to swap or not? 'Cause if you do let's get it over with. I don't want to be seen talking to you at school.''OK, don't . . . don't . . .' The odd boy's voice made no real change as he took the verbal blow. This, after all, was what he was used to. 'I just. I stole it like.' He looked at Harvey, who had turned to regard him without sympathy, and for the first time their eyes met. 'I stole it and it's difficult to give it to you.'Harvey ignored the bait; what did he care where he got it? 'So don't swap then.' He turned again and made, with some relief, for the farm gate that separated school grounds from the surrounding fields. This was the last time he bothered with the deadbeats, he'd done it before, talked to freaks and got caught up in things that really didn't interest him. Sod it, it wasn't worth it. He was on his way out of this, out of small-town life and into the city. He'd been to London admittedly with his Auntie Kate but he'd been there and it was where he was going, that was his future. All this rubbish, it didn't matter a damn.'Here, here, let's do it.' The odd boy was scrambling to get in front of him, brushing through the nettles that lined the path. Harvey wondered vaguely if his bare knees were stung. The odd boy gave no indication of pain and put his back to the gate, unwrapping the plastic tubing from his shoulder. 'It's yours now. Don't tell where you got it from.'He held it out eagerly and Harvey gazed at it wonderingly: why on earth would he want it? He actually shook his head but then caught the hope in the odd boy's eye and sighed again. God, it was ridiculous. He opened his satchel, a rather cool army surplus, canvas bag, on the flap of which he had painted the face of Donald Duck with a cigar in his beak. The painting was good. He pulled out the magazine, wrapped in the plastic sheath he put round all his comics.'Sure?' he asked with heavy irony.'Yeah, OK.' The odd boy held out the length of plastic and Harvey took it but the boy did not let go.'Give me the comic.' His voice was taut for a moment and Harvey glanced up surprised.'Yeah, all right,' he said. 'I'll just take this plastic cover off. Only collectors use these.' He tried to slip the liner away but the odd boy snatched it from him.'No' he said. 'I want it as you offered it to me.' He let go of the plastic wire and held the comic against him tightly, as though ready to defend it from attack.Harvey shook his head and raised his eyes with practised disbelief. 'You fucking freak,' he said, and pushing the odd boy aside, clambered over the gate. He walked away, slashing the grasses to left and right, all the way up to the point where the wild world was tamed and blended into the edge of the rugby pitch. As he walked, the odd boy's eyes did not leave him. Clutched in his hands, the Superman One Superman One was pressed to his chest, tightly held, but also unwrinkled: guarded against harm. was pressed to his chest, tightly held, but also unwrinkled: guarded against harm.
Chapter One: London, the present
The sigh had become a feature of the man. And when he sighed it signified no special existential despair, only an acknowledgement of the fact that another day has come and the coffee that he was drinking was no better than it had been yesterday. He sat in unsplendid isolation at the counter of his shop, his back to the rows and rows of stands that ran away from him towards the front door. Each stand was thick with plastic and in the harsh strip lighting it was hard to see that each piece of plastic contained a comic.'All right, Harvey? Make us one, I'm freezing.'How long had it been from his own arrival until Josh tapped him playfully on one shoulder while walking the other way? The coffee cup was still warm in his hands. He looked up. 'You're late.' He hadn't actually checked the time but he liked to start each working day by registering a complaint, preferably to Josh.'What's up? We open, are we?''Of course we are open. We keep business hours, or at least, I do.''Well, the sign doesn't say Open.' Josh went back to the door and turned a rather grubby picture of Thor God of Thunder saying Closed to an identical one of him saying Open. 'You wonder why we don't get any customers, but you have to turn the sign round, Harvey.' Giggling, Josh made his way behind the counter and through into the back room where they kept the coffee. 'You might have been swamped with customers by now if you'd remembered that simple rule.' Josh's voice was muffled by the sound of water being run into a kettle.But not muffled enough.'Fuck off.' Harvey rose from his seat at the counter and moved to the front of the shop to avoid Josh's voice, which now began painfully to accompany music on XFm from the back room. He opened the door and walked out into a February wind that made him lift his shoulders and narrow his eyes.If only.Some days it was worse than usual, the memories, the wondering. It had never left him. Ever since he moved from Cornwall, made his way to the big city, he'd sort of expected it to go, to withdraw into some back room of his mind, but every day it had seemed stronger. He breathed deep of the icy air and contemplated the empty street. Few customers here, no passing trade. The sigh was a part of him, as much as the hunch of the shoulder and the reach for the cigarettes from the inside pocket of his denim jacket. He struggled to light up in the hectic wind, failed, swore vaguely and made his way back into the shop to sit once more behind the counter on one of the two high stools. After a few moments he stabbed out the butt with a hard vicious motion.'Turn that shit down, will you, Josh!''OK, Harvey, OK. You don't need to get nasty.' And Harvey put his head in his hands and felt the way his hair was disappearing, leaving him: abandoning ship.'What I could have done.' It was one thirty and the Queen's Head was full. But they had been there for over an hour and had a prime seat. It was a pub without noticeable character or appeal. But it was located midway between one set of office blocks and another and had accepted the benefits of fortune without complaint. It was also the closest place to get a drink to Inaction Comix.'What might have been.' Harvey was making a song of it, an ironic little play for Josh's benefit. What else could he do? He'd told the story too many times.'Yeah.' Josh's mind and his glasses were on the fruit machine and more specifically the T-shirt of the pretty blonde leaning against it. 'Yeah, you could have been in Tahiti or something.''New York.' Harvey didn't like his fantasy to be made commonplace. No lottery winner's confusion for him. He knew what he'd have done. 'A little coffee house downtown with murals on the walls, Spider-Man Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four Fantastic Four, you know, classy but trashy, and I'd still have collected but just for fun.''Yeah, cool. A Superman One Superman One would have got you that, no problem.' Josh smiled hopefully at the blonde who turned away to her less desirable friend with a grimace. 'You could have been a contender.' He put on a comedy-Brando to cover his not unanticipated failure and tried to catch the friend's eye. would have got you that, no problem.' Josh smiled hopefully at the blonde who turned away to her less desirable friend with a grimace. 'You could have been a contender.' He put on a comedy-Brando to cover his not unanticipated failure and tried to catch the friend's eye.'Yeah, I could have been a contender,' Harvey pulled on his third pint 'but Bleeder is the contender now. He's out there somewhere with a Superman One Superman One. And good luck to him.'The blackboards above the bar described the almost risibly limited selection of foodstuffs that the pub had to offer. He examined them with the eyes of one who has read them before but seeks distractions.'Maybe he's sold it, but maybe he chucked it away the day after you gave it to him.' Josh found his attention caught, as it often was, by the topic of Harvey's loss.'No, he hasn't sold it: they only come on the market every blue moon and it's always in the press when they do. I've sat and watched its value increase for twenty years. Every year I look in Overstreet and every year it's another few thousand dollars. A few thousand a year for twenty years . . . So yeah, maybe he chucked it out with the trash. Or maybe he just likes reading it too much to part with it.''What did you swap it for again?' Josh wasn't usually malicious, that's why Harvey liked him, or tolerated him at least. He picked up his pint and finished it in a long mouthful.'Fuck off,' he said.'So, have you decided about going to the reunion?' Josh was struggling to keep pace and his fourth pint was making him slur a little. Harvey had strict standards about alcohol consumption: don't get silly until the fifth pint, but he politely ignored Josh's faux pas.'I've thrown the letter away,' he said, making sure he enunciated clearly. 'I just don't see the point really. What could I possibly say or do to interest those people?'The letter had arrived in the Saturday post and Harvey had been expecting it. It offended everything in his nature that he was expecting it, indeed he had tried very hard not to expect it, which is a difficult trick to perform. Every year they came, and every year he attempted it. And every year the trick failed. When it arrived he had a debate with himself and this too was a repeat of one he'd been having for twenty years. The debate involved two levels. The first was the 'I'm not going to go' level. The second was the 'I'm not going to let my going or not going mean anything in a feeble, shallow way about where my life has got to' level. The letter was an invitation to a reunion at his old school in Cornwall, and at both levels he usually lost.This year was particularly pressing as it was twenty years and would be a more formal affair. Twenty years since they had sat their O levels together in the draughty school hall, the same place they would hold the reunion. And now O levels were an historical relic, as meaningless when trying to impress the younger generation as boasting of your high-score on Space Invaders.'So tell them you run a comic shop.' Josh managed to make it sound like a good thing to say.'Mmm, you mean tell them exactly what I told them the last time I was down two years ago, and the year before that and five years ago, and ten?''Well, yeah.'Harvey sighed his sigh, and flicked cigarette ash into a metal tin on the ugly little table that the pub grudgingly allowed its customers to sit at. 'Admit that in the years since I last saw them I've not got married, or had any children, or had a promotion, or inherited a fortune . . . That what I've done is exactly the same things I was doing last time I went?''Well, tell them you've expanded.''They'll see that for themselves.''In the shop, tell them you're doing really well and planning to open another branch, something like that.''Lie to them?''Yeah.''It's a thought.' Harvey dropped the stub of his cigarette into the tin tray and watched it lying there smoking by itself. 'But if I'm going to do that why not tell them I've won the lottery and am moving to New York to open a coffee house with superheroes on the walls? I mean, if I'm going to lie why not make it something exciting?'Josh grinned to announce a joke: 'Tell them you found a Superman One Superman One.'Harvey closed his eyes for a long moment. Then he sighed. The fact that he did it a lot didn't mean it was only a habit.
Chapter Two
'The thing about reunions is that they bring out the old you.''So don't go.''But that's the point, I like the old me. I like the me that I was at school. Believe it or not, I was cool. In with the in-crowd. Comics gave me that. That's why I've stuck with them. But whereas it was cool at school it kind of gets less and less cool as you get older. To the point where it will, very soon I suspect, become ridiculous. And then what do I do? Go for a job at a bank or somewhere, and they'll ask: 'Experience?' and I'll say: 'Adding up the cash register after selling a Fantastic Four Number Six Fantastic Four Number Six.''What condition?''Never mind.''It's a big price difference. I mean if it was mint then, to be honest, I would think any bank would be impressed.' Josh spluttered into his drink. 'And I guess for you it's especially poignant, going back.''Why?''Because that was a time when you weren't bitter and twisted.''What the fuck do you mean?' Harvey demanded, knowing exactly what he meant. 'Who's bitter and twisted?''You are, about the Superman One Superman One. But you didn't know it was valuable then, so it's the one time in your life you weren't thinking about what you might have had.'Harvey looked for a while into the bottom of his glass. It was an occasional habit of Josh's to speak a devastating truth unexpected and unlooked-for. Harvey had once taken, very briefly, to wearing a cape to work. It had been long and black with a red velvet lining. As he walked from the tube one morning he had caught sight of his reflection in a shop window and had tried hard to place what he saw. When he arrived, Josh was waiting outside the shop and Harvey had asked him what he thought. 'You look like the Frog Prince,' Josh had said simply. And Harvey, for all he had told him to go fuck himself, knew at once that he was right; and the cloak had been quietly put at the back of the cupboard against the unlikely event that he was ever invited to a fancy dress party. And Josh was right again: that time was special because he hadn't carried the burden that he always denied he carried now. That time did appear somehow blessed and he always seemed to be looking for some way back to that. All roads for a long time had seemed to lead backwards. So he told Josh to go fuck himself.'So maybe you'll go back and you'll meet Bleeder there.' Josh smiled encouragingly, making Harvey grimace, not least because it saddened him to think that his shop assistant knew this boy's playground nickname from his schooldays well enough to use it in conversation without pausing to think. They had had this conversation before. But not for a while and Josh was suddenly animated. 'I mean, he hasn't been back to any of the other reunions, has he? But this one is twenty years. People get more sentimental as they reach middle age, maybe he'll feel the time is right.' He spoke with all the wisdom of the young and Harvey shook his head, wincing slightly at the words 'middle age'.'I doubt it,' he said. 'You really don't listen, do you? Bleeder had a shit time at school, I've told you that. Every day of every term he had a shit time. Everyone took the piss, all the time. That's how it was. Why would he want to come back and see everybody again? He'd have to be mad.''Well, why did you pick on him?' Josh blushed, making Harvey wonder, not for the first time, if perhaps he had suffered at school.'Because he was odd. I've told you before. He was weird and everybody knew it. He didn't have any clothes other than these sort of weird mismatches from the charity shop. And his hair was cut short by his mum. And he talked funny, sort of high-pitched and freaky, like a kind of girlish voice. And he wasn't into anything. He didn't know music, or comics, or sport, and, of course, he didn't stand a chance with the girls 'cause of, well, all of the above. And to top it all he was ginger. And gingers are by definition fair game. In fact, in some parts of the world they are legally hunted.' He sipped the last drops from his glass and noticed that Josh wasn't smiling. 'Look, he took shit, OK? Every school has one and he was ours. I didn't like it, didn't do it much, didn't encourage it in others. If I thought about it, which I didn't very often, then I thought it was harsh. But it happened. And if it had happened to you would you go back to see all those lovely people who made your life hell for a get-together? No, of course you wouldn't. So that's why he's never there.'He spoke clearly and with confidence, but in his mind there was already forming a picture of Bleeder standing in the school hall where the reunions always happened. He was looking a bit downtrodden and sad and pathetic but Harvey was going up to him and shaking his hand. And Bleeder was smiling and saying there was no hard feelings and then he was telling Harvey: 'Oh that old comic, oh no we burned that years ago' and the two of them were having a laugh about those strange times and that strange day of the swap and that funny length of plastic that Bleeder was carrying and Harvey was saying 'If only we had that comic now we'd both be rich' and they were laughing and shaking their heads over the inequities of fate and then it was over and Harvey was getting on with things, getting on with his whole life, in fact, without thinking about something as pathetic as this all the time.That it was such a fully realised fantasy sweeping so swiftly through Harvey's mind is explained by the fact that it had done so many, many times before. 'I'd love to see him,' he said meditatively now, 'just talk it over with him once. I've thought about phoning him a million times. Or phoning his mum anyway, getting a number for him, assuming he isn't still living at home.' He sniggered before remembering that Josh lived with his mother. 'Getting hold of him and just having a chat, you know. Seeing what he's up to, how he's doing ...''Seeing if he's still got the Superman One Superman One. Seeing if you can have it back'. Josh was not in forgiving mood.'No. Well, yeah, why not? Who knows what people keep, you know? Half the world doesn't know the value of what it's got in its attic. I've probably got a Rembrandt, or a rare stamp or some other junk. He might have a Superman One Superman One. I'd love to just check.''And rip him off. Offer him 50p for it, say you want it back for sentimental reasons. And then flog it for a couple of hundred grand. Something like that?''Er, yeah.' Harvey didn't like it when people he considered intellectually inferior to himself read his mind. 'Something like that.' And he laughed, but without much enthusiasm.'Well, why don't you just ring him then? If his mum still lives in Cornwall why not just get her number from the directory and ring her up. For all you know he committed suicide as a result of your cruelty and you've been dreaming of ripping him off all these years for nothing.'This was so outrageously over the top that Harvey snorted with laughter and Josh was forced to join him. 'It might happen,' he said, trying to remain angry. 'Anything might have happened in twenty years, you don't know.''Yeah, he might have had twenty years of therapy and be ready to forgive me. Maybe he'll even give me the comic to prove he's cured.''So why don't you, you bloody git?''Why don't I ring him?' Harvey was sniggering in anticipation. 'I'll tell you why, shall I? I don't ring him because I can't remember his fucking name. All I know is that he was Bleeder the odd boy.' He laughed so loud he caused heads to turn in the pub and drowned out Josh's spluttery cackle. 'Oh Jesus,' Harvey said, 'I really ought to remember his name, after what we put him through.'
Chapter Three
On the journey down from London, Harvey again tried to remember his name. He could see the pale, unhappy face before him but all he could think of was the odd boy. Bleeder the odd boy. It brought a vague and, in truth, fleeting feeling of guilt that he couldn't come up with any more than that. In the carriage of the 10.05 from Paddington to Penzance he prepared with what he considered military precision (but what was actually closer to civilian sloth). Lounging with a pen in one hand and a fake-leopard-skin-covered writing pad one pound for two from Quidbusters, Lewisham in the other, he planned his past. Josh's suggestion of lying had impressed him and, once he had decided to attend the reunion, he had spent some time toying with mysterious women friends, unexpected side careers, and even, for a dangerous moment, MI5. However, he had settled, as Josh had suggested, on a sense of heightened reality. Nothing too unlikely, just a mention of other departments at the shop; buying trips actually to Bristol and Manchester extended, more by implication than direct statement, to include New York and Vancouver; Josh multiplying, splitting amoeba-like into a multitude of assistants; hints about cars, property. Harvey jingled the keys in his pocket and thought for a while about the house in Hampstead they might belong to. He really could picture it: nothing too flashy, one of those cottagey jobs up by the park. Was he married? No, that was too much. But he was involved. Kind of in love: who wouldn't love her? But he wasn't sure he was ready. How do you ever know for sure? That was his problem. He actually chuckled out loud at the trickiness of the situation: how could a man in his position ever be really sure someone better wouldn't come along? She wanted kids, but, you know, he wanted to wait until he could see something of them, and that meant waiting till the pressure was off, and that could be a long wait. As the train entered a tunnel he found his own reflection looking back at him in the window. He saw the shaved head where once dark hair had been tied back in a ponytail shaved, not to look like David Beckham so much as to stop him looking like his dad as it fell out of its own accord. He saw the stomach bulge underneath the black T-shirt with StanTheManLee written across it in green. He did the sigh. It was hard when people only saw you once every few years. How could that be anything but a punishment? The only consolation was that it was mutual. He thought for a moment about old Rob's battle with cancer and then hated it when he found himself smiling. Shit, that was not how he'd meant to end up. And that was the problem, of course: this was all about how you'd ended up, but he never felt like he'd ended anywhere really. He always felt, somehow, that he was about to begin.And that took the guilt about forgetting Bleeder's name away. It was all so distant now, so meaningless. Why should he remember something from that far back? Who he used to be was disappearing into the image in the glass, as if he could see the person he had once been fleeting away from him in the racing landscape. What did it matter what Bleeder's real name was?*'Charles Odd.' The man in the smart suit rather too smart for these surroundings held out his hand and Harvey shook it with wonder in his eyes.'How are you?' Harvey felt the hand in his, firm and dry. The voice was strong, rich, without a trace of Cornwall in it.How do we recognise people? It's an unanswered question. Harvey had once read an article on psychology that said we plot the face like a computer scanner, remembering the tiniest nuances of singularity. Well, he had scanned this face long ago and it was fixed. He had sighted it from across the floor where he stood surrounded by most of the old crowd: Jack, who had got into heroin for a while after college but now was clean and living in Wales with his 'old lady'; Rob, who played lower league football for three years after school and then did a bit of coaching and now, following cancer treatment, worked in a sports shop in Ealing . . . ('We should get together, H, I'd like to see your shop . . .' Slight panic there, partly at the idea of someone witnessing the reality of his carefully constructed fantasy life, and partly at being called H again a name that was so cool it hurt at school, but which now made him think of that twat out of Steps); Susan, who used to go out with Jack but who was now married to a man in the navy who was away a lot (Harvey noticed Jack look at her with a mixture of nostalgia and possibility); and Steve, who'd stayed in town, stayed in little old St Ives all this time, and ran a beach shop. That had led to the usual humorous remarks: 'Not far to come then, Steve?'; 'Well, you've spread your wings, you must have flown at least two hundred yards,' etc, jokes which were genuinely funny at that first get-together, fifteen years ago, which was a less formal affair when everyone was still optimistic, and when the town seemed like a deadly snare rather than something troublingly like what they were looking for.And the man whose face he'd scanned all those years ago had come over and smiled. 'It's Harvey, isn't it? H? I'm sure I remember that face.' And Harvey had swallowed, like a child meeting a policeman, and had grinned and felt a ludicrous blush spread over his cheeks. 'Er, yeah, and I know you ...''Charles Odd. I was in your class, actually, though I don't think we moved in the same circles, did we?' He laughed. 'It's good to see you though. How's things?'Harvey wanted to scream. Indeed, he felt some sort of cry welling up inside and had to actively repress it. Bleeder. Bleeder Odd: not just odd but Odd. Fuck, he should have remembered that. Bleeder was here. Exactly as he had dreamed it. As he had seen it in his mind's eye. Except here he was dapper and smiling, not the shuffling, miserable deadbeat that Harvey had created. But here he was. A man he had thought about every day of his adult life. And never without regret and desire, pity and self-pity, guilt and bitterness, avarice and anger. Here was that face: the pinched eyes grown clear: the long, pointed nose, drawn back by the fleshing of the cheeks: the narrow, frightened mouth, full-lipped and open to show perfect teeth in an almost constant smile. All the singularity altered, yet recognition was instant and indubitable. Harvey tried to focus on psychology. He couldn't take much else in.'This is my first time back in St Ives for ages,' the clear voice said as if telling him something small and of little interest, not something he had wondered about for twenty years. 'I don't get down much and I'm not so sure about reunions, it's a funny business, isn't it, meeting up like this? But this time I happened to be here anyway so I thought I'd drop in.' He glanced round with polite interest at the school assembly hall, taking in the long passageway that ran off it where the boys' toilets were: toilets in which Harvey knew for a fact Bleeder had been beaten senseless more times than he could remember. Harvey felt he was inhabiting a dream. Like fantasising all your life about meeting Lou Reed and when you finally do finding that he chats about soft furnishings. He hadn't really ever fixed in his mind what they would talk about, except of course for the Superman One Superman One. But he had assumed it would be significant, emotional, meaningful, that it would matter. Now here he was, here was Bleeder, and he just happened to be here and was exhibiting every sign of finding it a bit dull and of preparing to leave. 'Have you been before?' Bleeder asked politely.'Er, yeah, yeah once or twice.' Looking for you. Only looking for you.'And are they always like this?''Like what?''Well . . . a bit sad?''Mmm. I guess so.' Harvey could feel the top of his head beginning to lift, as if his brain was about to make its own way out of the situation. He put his hand up and scratched hard.'So, what are you up to now?' This was a question that he and the old crowd had actively and specifically banned when they came back for that first ever get-together. It was sort of a joke, so now they said it with irony and it actually meant 'this is boring, let's move on' sort of thing. But now Harvey said it and realised that it was The Question, it was what he had wanted to ask every day for two decades.'Oh, I do a bit of work in the City.' Bleeder smiled. 'Maths was always my thing, I guess.' No it wasn't, you didn't have a thing. You never had a thing.'Yeah, I remember.''So I set up a little company a while ago and it worked out quite well. I sold out last year, but I still do some consultancy work, a few days a week, here and in New York. It keeps me busy, without the stress.' He smiled again and Harvey found himself smiling back. He reached desperately for his pockets and remembered that it was no-smoking this year for the first time. He also remembered his leopard-skin notebook from Quidbusters, might Bleeder have one too?'Really, the City, cool. So finance, huh? Interesting.' It wasn't quite what he'd planned to say, but it was as good as anything else.'Yes, mostly at Reiser and Watts.' Bleeder produced a card and handed it to him. 'Do you know them?''Um, no, I just ...''. . . or perhaps you're not in finance?''No, no not finance.''OK.' Bleeder glanced round the room as if looking for someone more interesting to talk to. 'So, what are you in?''Comics.' Harvey found his cigarettes and got the packet out. If he couldn't smoke he could damn well fiddle with the box a bit. Attached to the packet, as if melded by his bodily emissions, was one of his own cards, with a picture of Betty Boo on it and his address. He passed it back.Bleeder was laughing. Bleeder was laughing at him. The realisation of how far this was from the fantasy picture he had painted was enough to make him want to join in.'Comics?' Bleeder was gazing at the card.'Yeah, funny really.' Harvey tried to smile. 'I just sort of carried on being interested after school.''Jesus, yes, you were the comic king, weren't you? Always swapping and bartering. You were a real wheeler-dealer. You should have ended up in the City really.' He laughed again and Harvey felt his scalp give another skip. Always swapping? Christ, do you really have no idea?'Er, yeah, so I just sort of stuck with it. Stick to what you're good at.' He made a vague phrase, for no reason discernible to him. 'I've got a shop, in London, in Old Street.' He should have added something about departments and assistants and foreign trips, but somehow it got lost.'Right.' Bleeder nodded and gave a longer, more searching glance around the room. 'Well, I guess if you like something ...''Exactly.' And Harvey saw his chance. He could just ask. So much build-up, twenty years of build-up was making it harder than it needed to be. He could simply ask straight out and be done with it. It would be over. Unexpectedly an enormous rush of adrenalin shot up his spine and sealed his mouth shut. If I ask it will be over. If I ask I will have to hear an answer. He looked down and saw that the cigarette packet was trembling in his hand, trembling so much that the cellophane wrapper that he had left round the box was making little crinkling sounds. He raised his head and took a deep breath.'Oh, there he is.' Bleeder was looking past him at a crowd gathered in the corner where the bar was. 'I've got to have a word.' And before Harvey could stop him, before another word could escape him, Bleeder had moved off into the crowd. Harvey found he was panting as if he had been running. And he wanted to run, to race after Bleeder, grab him by the shoulders. He had been so close to a new life, a new start. As he stood breathing heavily and pushing the cigarette packet in and out of the cellophane he looked at the group by the bar. Bleeder had joined it and was talking to an old man Harvey didn't recognise. Could he just go over? Demand that they continue the conversation? But he needed Bleeder alone. Perhaps he could drag him bodily outside. Who was that he was talking to? What could be more important than this conversation?Rob and Steve came over.'Bleeeeeder!' Rob hissed. 'Having a nice chat, H?''Mmm, well, yeah . . .' Harvey was still gazing after Bleeder, as if watching a departing unicorn. 'Who is that?' he asked. 'Talking to him, the old bloke?''That's Mr Simes,' both Steve and Rob answered together. 'Taught me physics,' Steve added, 'but also took maths. Top-stream maths. Not our class. Out of our league. Swot division. Hey, did Bleeder have your comic? The one that's going to make you rich?' Sometimes Harvey regretted his openness with his friends.'Er no. Don't think so . . . Was Bleeder in the top stream?' He moved the conversation on quickly to a point that caused him genuine surprise. 'I thought he was, well-''Just there to be kicked?' Rob finished for him. 'He was, he liked being kicked. But occasionally, just for a change, he did maths. Not much of a change really. I'm not sure I wouldn't have preferred the beatings myself. Touch and go.''Simes liked the maths swots,' Steve added. 'Bleeder was probably his pet. Kept him in a basket in the corner, fed him on bones.'Harvey realised they were sniggering and forced a smile. 'How old are you again?' he asked. This was another regular phrase, again getting less funny as the years passed.'Yeah, but he's Bleeder, H,' Steve said, grinning. 'He's Bleeeeeeder.''I know.' Harvey found a sharp note in his voice as he said it. 'I am fully aware of that.''Uh-oh, sense of humour failure. You need a drink, mate.' Rob patted him on the back and moved off towards the bar, which consisted of a long table with many plastic cups full of warm white wine on it.'We all need a drink.' Steve followed Rob down the room, leaving Harvey watching Bleeder with Zen-like focus. The old man he was talking to was hunched in a suit that could only belong to a retired teacher, grey and stained by a thousand chalk accidents. Mr Simes. Harvey tried to remember if he had been taught by Mr Simes at all. Perhaps he could go over and join in the conversation, mention algebra, for instance, or fractions. He didn't remember much else from maths and he didn't think he'd ever had Mr Simes. Once he would have known without having to think. Bleeder was animated now, waving his arms. People in the group were glancing round; looks of vague surprise that anyone could talk excitedly about anything at a reunion seemed to flicker across polite smiles.What is he doing? Harvey wondered. What is going on?But whatever it was ended and Bleeder at once moved away towards the door. Harvey saw that the old man was tempted to follow him. He made a move in the same direction as Bleeder's departing back, but then stopped as if uncertain. At that moment one of the group by the bar came over to the teacher. 'So still doing sums for a living, Simmo?' he asked loudly and got a small laugh from the crowd. Harvey shook his head, he'd done all the get-the-teacher-back stuff years ago. He turned and saw Bleeder stopped in the doorway, he was having to squeeze past someone that Harvey didn't recognise but wished he did. She was red-headed and nicely rounded with a clever, pretty face covered in freckles. She wore a long patchworked dress and her hair was tied back under purple silk. He noticed that much as he moved quickly to follow Bleeder. And as he passed her the woman spoke: 'I'm sorry, am I in the right place? I'm looking for Class of 1986.''Er, yeah.' Harvey liked her voice, it was sort of husky and mellow at the same time, like Mariella Frostrup after a Lemsip. 'It's in here, are you a graduate?''No, not me.' She smiled and he liked that too. 'My husband,' damn damn 'is Jeff Cooper, I don't know if you know him?' Harvey did. Big heavy fucker with a tattoo, liked rugby of course one of Bleeder's most persistent tormentors in the old days. 'is Jeff Cooper, I don't know if you know him?' Harvey did. Big heavy fucker with a tattoo, liked rugby of course one of Bleeder's most persistent tormentors in the old days.'Yeah. I think he's down by the bar.''That would be Jeff.' And her voice carried just enough weariness and even disgust for Harvey to feel suddenly happier. He glanced out into the hallway and found Bleeder was still there, looking at the inevitable stand of old photographs: always the same pictures.'I'm not sure it'll be much fun if you weren't at Trehendricks,' Harvey said kindly. 'It's a bit of a sad bunch getting nostalgic. I can't say I go for it myself,' he added quickly.'Oh, I don't know.' She smiled again. 'I think there's something rather sweet about doing it. Our past is who we are isn't it?' Harvey nodded thoughtfully, it certainly was for him. There were times when he thought that was all he was.'Mmm, scary thought,' he said. She smiled dutifully and he wished he'd said something more intelligent, so he tried again: 'I guess I'm never sure whether I'm trying to get away from all this or get back to it, you know?' He wasn't sure what he meant actually, but she reacted and looked him in the eye for a moment.'Yes, I do. And I feel very much like that a lot of the time. Recently especially . . .' She looked over Harvey's shoulder into the hall without enthusiasm. Harvey turned and found that Jeff Cooper was standing just behind him.'Chatting up my wife, Briscow?' He stabbed Harvey in both ribs with his fingers. Harvey managed not to squeal.'Trying to,' he said through his wince, 'but you're interrupting.'Cooper laughed at that. 'Cheeky fucker,' he said and attempted another dig but Harvey blocked with his elbows.'He was very kindly helping me,' she said, giving Harvey a rueful, almost fraternal smile.'Yes, you left her stranded in the hallway, Jeff,' said Harvey, 'and I was being gallant, in case you know what that means. The least you can do now is introduce us.''If you like.' Cooper moved gracelessly round and took his wife by the arm. 'Maisie, this is Harvey Briscow; Harvey Briscow, Maisie Cooper, my lovely missis. And now I'm removing her so she can meet somebody interesting.' He guffawed and began to move away but found she wasn't coming with him.'I have already met someone interesting,' said Maisie Cooper deliberately, 'and I thank him for his help.''No problem at all,' Harvey muttered and was appalled to find himself blushing again. He moved quickly on into the foyer, and she allowed herself to be steered off by her husband. Not looking back, Harvey took several deep breaths and gazed for a long moment at a photograph of a 1980s hockey team. It was only after he had realised just how un rewarding this was that he noticed Bleeder had gone.'Shit.' Without any noticeable change in mood, Harvey knew what he wanted to do: needed to do really. He ran out of the two sets of double doors that fronted the school and into driving rain.
Chapter Four
The school had allowed the weekend visitors to park their cars along the forecourt and the drive that led down to the road. One of these cars was revving and its lights were on in the gathering afternoon gloom. Harvey ran to the car, heedless of the fact that he had left his coat behind in the foyer, and tapped on the window. Bleeder leaned across and wound down the window. 'Hello,' he said. 'Need a lift?''Yeah,' Harvey had to shout against the wind, 'thanks.' He grabbed the door of what he realised was one of the nicest cars he'd ever entered, and climbed aboard.'Thanks,' he said again. 'I came without a coat. It was all right earlier.''Yes. Cornish weather.' Negotiating the driveway, Bleeder seemed to have other things on his mind. They sat in silence for a few moments until the car had pulled out of a difficult blind turn and onto the main road. Then came traffic lights, which were red.'Which way are you heading?' Bleeder broke the silence and Harvey waved his hand vaguely.'Oh, into town. I just wanted to get out of there really. It's a bit . . . I don't know.''Yes, there are better ways to spend an afternoon.' Again, Harvey was astounded by the change from boy to man. He was articulate, precise, engaging, competent. All the things he hadn't been at school.'I guess for you it's very hard.' Harvey only realised he'd said this aloud as he heard it echo to the backbeat of the rain.'Me, why?''Well, I guess you had a rough time here. At school, I mean. I mean, didn't you? I seem to remember you getting a bit of stick and stuff . . .' A bit of stick.Bleeder smiled, he actually grinned. 'Did I? Yes, I suppose I did, though I was hardly aware of it at the time. I had other things going on in my life.' He put this last sentence in slightly ironic parentheses and then added with even greater emphasis: 'I had issues.''Right, yeah. Well, I guess we all do at that age.''Do we?' Bleeder looked across at him with genuine interest. 'Did you?''Er, well, yes, I guess.''What were your issues?' Jesus Jesus. Harvey had the strange sensation of suddenly wanting to get out of a conversation he had been waiting twenty years to have.'Um. Well, you know, teenage stuff and home was, you know, tricky.''Yes? Can you say more about that?'Christ. 'No, no not really . . . I mean, it's kind of my stuff, I guess, water under the bridge and so on.' What was he supposed to say?'OK. I can understand that.' Bleeder was nodding. 'But it can help to talk that stuff through a little bit, engage with it and let it sort of unpick itself, don't you think?''Oh sure, yeah, I talk about it a lot. I just don't really want to now.' 'Sure, that's fine.''Thanks.' Harvey found himself literally mopping his brow with his sleeve, though whether it was rain or sweat he wasn't sure. He went on quickly, 'I mean, so, you know, what's up with you being here? I mean, you said inside that you just happened to be passing. But, I don't know why, I don't get the impression you pass through town that much or that often.''No I don't.' They were driving down the main road to St Ives, and suddenly caught a glimpse of the sea. The rain was blowing from that direction, buffeting the driver's side of the car as they passed the lines of hotels and guest houses, mostly empty so early in the year and poignant with that special decay of a resort town in winter. 'I'm only here now to sort out Mother.''Sort her out?' Harvey was dying for a cigarette but didn't like to ask if he could light up in this extraordinarily civilised car. The seats were deep cream leather, the dashboard a riot of technology, set, with the typical obscenity of the engineer, in wood-look surround. It was warm and Harvey could sense underchair heating, which, after the rain, made him feel just a bit as if he had wet his pants.'Move her. She's reached an age when she can no longer rattle about in the old house. Do you remember my old house?' He shot a glance across at Harvey and Harvey ducked. He did remember the house. He had been inside only once, but had bicycled past it many times. Indeed he and his friends sometimes used to ride past and sing at the same time. And what they sang was: 'Bleeder Odd, super-bore, looks like a spastic and his mum's a whore'. To the tune of 'Jesus Christ Superstar', of course. Sometimes they had sung it twenty times or more before Mrs Odd, 'Old Mrs Odd' as she was even then, had run out screaming at them, her hair always a mess of tangles, her clothes weirdly smart but filthy. Screamed words of such obscenity that secretly Harvey had been terrified. But he had laughed and ridden off, yelling insults with the rest. So yes, he knew the house. It stood alone, a white, child-architect's square box, in the land that was slowly being colonised by the new estates spreading out from St Ives, not far from the school. And with that, he realised that Bleeder was driving directly away from his own destination.'Yeah, I remember the house, and er, sorry, am I taking you out of your way?''It's OK. I'm glad to have a look at at the place again. It's so long since I was down and I only got here last night. Meetings going on till lunchtime, then a long drive. Pretty crap day, actually.''Right, right.' Something was itching in Harvey's brain. Something was niggling.'You say you're moving your mother,' he said deliberately.'Yes. The social services have found her a place in sheltered accommodation. Three rooms, private bathroom, but part of a community. It's up near St Ia's Church, so it's a lot closer to town. She can't manage the bus so well now.'Harvey flapped his hand at this extraneous information as at a mosquito. 'So you must be throwing out a lot of stuff?''Oh God, yes.' Bleeder shook his head. 'She's been there for ever. You would not believe some of the stuff . . .' He stopped, as though reminded of something. 'There's so much stuff.''Must be. I wonder . . .' Harvey stopped.'It's amazing what you accumulate. Over the years. It's amazing what you manage to keep. Bits and pieces.'Harvey looked across at Bleeder who was speaking slowly and with an uneasy precision.'Lot's of things from your schooldays, sort of thing? Stuff from when we were kids?''Oh stuff from forever. From way back, before I was born, things of my dad's. She's been packing for weeks with someone from the social services helping her. They've thrown loads out but there's still boxes and boxes. I'm supposed to be going through it, things the social services woman thought might be mine . . .''They've thrown loads out,' Harvey repeated slowly.'Yes, gave it to Oxfam and the other thrift shops, I think, what was salvageable. But a lot of it just went to the dump.''But your stuff,' Harvey was staring at Bleeder intently, 'you haven't gone through it all yet?''No, I haven't started. Couldn't face it last night and today I had the reunion. Tomorrow we might get a bit done but Mum's going to see her sister, Auntie Flo, who lives in Pad-stow and she insists she's got to go through everything herself. So it'll be tomorrow night and then all day Monday.' He sighed. 'I'm not sure I can even be bothered really. Maybe it's just better to get rid of everything, you know. I haven't needed any of this stuff for twenty years. Why would I suddenly need it now?''Right.' Harvey nodded hard. They had driven well past the turn to his parents' house. The long row of shops that led them into the town centre had been passed without him really noticing at all and they were now following the road that skirted the centre itself and led out along the harbour wall and up to rejoin the coast road beyond. 'It's funny,' he said, 'but talking about old stuff, I was wondering if you remembered something.''Oh?''Yeah. It's nothing really, just a memory that came back to me just now.' Harvey felt his voice beginning to rise as if in panic. He coughed and cleared his throat. 'Excuse me. It's just, ages ago, back at school, you know, there was a day: we were walking up to school and we swapped something I think. Yeah, that's it, we did a swap. Do you remember at all? We exchanged something.''A swap?''Yeah, yeah. I remember it because I swapped a comic I think. That was it, wasn't it? I swapped a comic with you. Do you remember that?' The twenty years of thinking about this moment hadn't misled him, it was just as hard as he'd ever imagined it might be.'A swap? A comic?' Bleeder was narrowing his eyes as he turned left and followed the road away from the harbour towards the hill that led out of town. 'A swap. I do remember something. You gave me a comic.''Yeah, some crappy comic.' Harvey was very sure it was sweat that he was feeling now and wished he could turn the wet pants device off. 'You wanted it and I let you have it. Something like that. Remember?''I do. I sort of do.' The road was busy as people drove out of town from shopping and there was a traffic jam up the hill towards the lights. Bleeder brought the car to a halt. 'I wanted your comic and you let me have it. It was a swap.' His voice was far away from the car and the traffic, even from the rain and the wind.'It's just . . . It's funny, I was just then wondering what happened to it. The comic, I mean. 'Cause I run a comic shop as I told you and I was just thinking: I wonder what happened to that old comic. I don't even remember what it was, what kind. But I do remember swapping. I wonder if it might be with your stuff, the stuff you're going to go through on Monday.''Yes, a comic. I do remember but it was so long ago. We did a swap, you swapped a comic. What did I swap?''If you are going through your old things, I just wondered, if you found it you might let me have it back. 'Cause comics are kind of my thing. You never know, it might be worth a few quid now. I might buy it from you for a couple of pounds, just for nostalgic reasons, yeah?' Harvey laughed a weird and, to his ear, raspingly unattractive laugh, a skull's laugh. He was gazing out of the windscreen now, staring forwards, watching the raindrops splash and splinter the red lights and then be swept aside over and over again.'I'll, I'll think. I'll have a think.' The lights changed and Bleeder engaged the engine. 'I'll have a think, but it may be gone. It's probably gone.' He pulled forward as the queue began to move. 'Where am I dropping you, by the way? I can't remember where you-''Oh, actually, anywhere's fine. I need to go to the shops and so on. Thanks.' The car came to an immediate halt, bringing a horn's cry of outrage from behind.'So, there you are,' Bleeder said.'Oh right, yeah, cheers.' Harvey, surprised by the suddenness of his arrival, fumbled with his seatbelt and tried to open the door. The horn sounded again and Bleeder reached across him to grab the handle. 'You have to push it like this'. His voice was as clear and precise as when they first met but when Harvey looked for a moment into his eyes they were wild and staring, as if Bleeder had seen something terrible, something unthinkable. And the hand that opened the door for him, Harvey couldn't help noticing, was trembling.
Chapter Five
The road was eerily familiar. Tired bare trees led the eye from the end of a row of cheap prefabs directly past the house, as though the planners had intentionally wanted it not to be noticed. Harvey could see their point. The estate had encroached a little more perhaps. A few extra buildings, but indistinguishable from those that had marked the end of the estate in his day. There were even some boys riding their bikes up and down the road, using the kerb as a mini-jump to perform wheel spins. The boys gave Harvey a look-over and passed some inaudible but apparently hilarious remark, and then carried on. None of them was singing. Harvey was glad of that.The house itself sat with its same grim disinterest back from the road behind a garden that had the look of somewhere that had been beaten up. It was as though someone had stepped into the matted nature and slashed about them with a scythe until there was a semblance of desolate order. Harvey stood uncertain outside the peeling white gate in the peeling white fence and looked at the windows. There were net curtains at all four of them, grey net curtains. Then he walked, whistling casually until he realised he was whistling 'Jesus Christ Superstar', at which he stopped abruptly along the road past the house. He assumed Bleeder must be out, for no handsome silver car adorned the road in front. 'If I had a car like that I wouldn't leave it here,' Harvey muttered to himself and then realised the implications of that. 'Shit, what if he's parked down on the main road and is even now watching me through the netties.' Harvey himself had parked his father's car ('Now don't go scratching me paintwork, I know you'; 'Piss off, Dad') about half a mile down the main road from the town. Now he stomped on through the estate, past the boys who stopped their play to stand and stare at him, their mouths agape. 'Bloody inbreds,' he said. But he said it very, very quietly.Last night had been a long one. He had returned home early, his mind so full of Bleeder and the conversation in the car that he had forgotten the dangers of family life. It was only as he crossed the threshhold and heard that oh so familiar phrase, 'Is that you, dear?', filled with hope and joy and eagerness, that he had realised his peril.'Yes, it's me, Mum. Who else is it going to be?' Funny how fourteen is still lurking in even the most full-grown of men: the words had come as naturally as breathing. He had attempted the surly stalk upstairs to his room. But what had worked in youth seemed to have lost its power. Maturity had emasculated him. That or his mother had grown braver with age.'Come in and have a chat while I make you something to eat. Your father's in the garden and we can have fresh salad with the stew. There's football on later, your father said, and we might get the Scrabble out. Could we play and watch at the same time? I know how you men like to watch football and not be disturbed . . .' and on and on. And it was either use the absolute sanction, the 'fuck off, you old cow' option, or come on the Reds and double-word scores. Harvey had done the sigh and accepted that you couldn't go for the absolute on your second night in town: second of four. So he had gone in and listened to his mother's voice talking about her church meetings and her friend's bad leg and the tourist who drowned in the bay and the bad weather and anything else that floated into her mind. And while she spoke he sat and went over and over the conversation with Bleeder, picking it clean of meaning, stripping it, trying to tear his way to an answer he could accept. At some point his father had come in clutching a handful of spring onions and started being boisterous. 'Come along, come along, where's my dinner, woman? I'm back from the hunt and ready to eat.''Oh yes, you must be starving, darling, and Harvey is too, aren't you, dear? Two big hungry bears . . .' Harvey had sat smoking at the breakfast bar, into which, if he looked closely, he could see 'Johnny Flame' carved in his own childish hand. He tried not to look closely.'Starving, are you? Good man. Need a bit of real cooking. Not that rubbish you eat in those fancy restaurants, eh? None of that nouvelle cuisine? Shite cuisine I call it.''Donald!''Well, it is. Not enough on a plate to feed an Ethiopian. Real food, that's what we want, eh, Harvey?''Mmm.' Harvey wondered vaguely if perhaps one day, a long time ago, someone had laughed at one of his father's jokes, someone other than his mother, of course, who was now tittering distractedly. Harvey wondered if it might be possible to find that person and punish them in some way. After all, the past did piece itself together sometimes. Pieces that seemed unlinkable, knots that seemed unpickable . . . sometimes the past can surprise us. And so back to Bleeder.After Scrabble ('I'm sure "quark" is a word, dear, but I've never heard of it so we can't count it: that's our house rule, remember . . .'), and after Match of the Day Match of the Day ('They're overpaid and should respect the referee!'), when he was finally allowed to get away and up the stairs into the one true sanctuary he had ever known, Harvey lay very still in his bedroom and blew smoke at the ceiling. What had Bleeder said? 'I'll think, but it's probably gone,' something like that. What did 'probably' mean? Well, it meant it might be gone. And that would be all right. As he smoked, Harvey had nodded to himself, unsurprised by this fact. If it had definitely gone sent off years ago to some kids' charity, or burned on the bonfire or whatever then that was OK. On the other hand, if it had only been given away in the last couple of days . . . that wasn't OK. Where would it have been given to? Oxfam, Bleeder had said. Could he go trawling round the second-hand shops of St Ives hunting for a comic? Did charity shops even sell comics? He'd been in enough but couldn't remember ever seeing any. What if the charity shop owner knew enough to enquire about a first edition? What if the headline in the local paper a week from now was 'Charity Shop Owner Strikes It Rich (And Opens Superhero-themed Coffee Shop In Downtown New York)'? That very definitely wouldn't be all right. But Bleeder's stuff hadn't been gone through yet. That was the point. That was, in fact, a very key point. Harvey had sat up and looked around his room for a while. It was a room unchanged since his childhood and that, of course, was typical in families like his. What was less typical and slightly more troubling was that it bore a close resemblance to his current rooms in London. The old bedroom posters were of ('They're overpaid and should respect the referee!'), when he was finally allowed to get away and up the stairs into the one true sanctuary he had ever known, Harvey lay very still in his bedroom and blew smoke at the ceiling. What had Bleeder said? 'I'll think, but it's probably gone,' something like that. What did 'probably' mean? Well, it meant it might be gone. And that would be all right. As he smoked, Harvey had nodded to himself, unsurprised by this fact. If it had definitely gone sent off years ago to some kids' charity, or burned on the bonfire or whatever then that was OK. On the other hand, if it had only been given away in the last couple of days . . . that wasn't OK. Where would it have been given to? Oxfam, Bleeder had said. Could he go trawling round the second-hand shops of St Ives hunting for a comic? Did charity shops even sell comics? He'd been in enough but couldn't remember ever seeing any. What if the charity shop owner knew enough to enquire about a first edition? What if the headline in the local paper a week from now was 'Charity Shop Owner Strikes It Rich (And Opens Superhero-themed Coffee Shop In Downtown New York)'? That very definitely wouldn't be all right. But Bleeder's stuff hadn't been gone through yet. That was the point. That was, in fact, a very key point. Harvey had sat up and looked around his room for a while. It was a room unchanged since his childhood and that, of course, was typical in families like his. What was less typical and slightly more troubling was that it bore a close resemblance to his current rooms in London. The old bedroom posters were of Batman Batman and and Spider-Man Spider-Man rather than rather than Darkman Darkman and and Tomb Raider Tomb Raider, but they weren't posters he would find unacceptable in his grown-up world. He sometimes tried to argue that this was because he had always had good and adult taste. It was an argument entirely with himself, and was another that he rarely felt any confidence of winning.Sleep had not come that night, not until the morning was advancing. This was unusual. Harvey was normally a good sleeper, beer having a pleasantly narcotic effect. But this time there was a reason for insomnia. Deep in his heart he already knew that he was going to rob Bleeder's house. He couldn't pin down when that decision was made. It was as if he had always known it. Perhaps it had formed as an inevitable somewhere in those twenty years of waiting. You can't care this much about something so particular for this long without some sort of action, however ineffectual, becoming necessary. Harvey knew that he owed it, as it were, to the next quarter of a century, to do everything he could do. It was as simple as that: his future self depended on it.Which didn't make it easy, of course. As he strode rapidly away from Bleeder's house, he thought of how impossible crime could seem. He sometimes liked to think of himself as a bit of an outlaw: the tin under his bed with the lump of Black in it; the car with the 'applied for' sticker in place of a tax disc; the 'adult graphic novel' section of his bookshelves. But somehow this had nothing to do with breaking and entering. The house looked so solid. The walls and windows such tangible, physical proofs of right and wrong. It was as if, for a moment, as he walked purposefully away in the wrong direction, he could see the very tablets of the Old Testament reformed and reconstituted into solid whitewashed walls.
Chapter Six
Breaking a window with a brick is actually quite difficult.After a swift walk through the estate, intended to give the impression that he was late and going somewhere important, Harvey had made his way round to the cul-de-sac that ran along the bottom of Bleeder's garden. The road had no houses on it and came to an end in a thicket of half-grown trees and burned-out cars, with only a muddy track running off it. Harvey recognised the track as the one he used to walk up to school. At other times he might have stopped for a brief bout of nostalgia, characterised by the words: 'Thank Christ I don't have to do that any more.' But today's business was too serious for such indulgences. From the path, Mrs Odd's back garden looked worse than her front. No wild threshing had happened here. Thick nettles and brambles were intertwined with long grass and piles of rubble. Bits of unknowable things emerged from bushes. This was comforting to Harvey. Clearly no one had been up Mrs Odd's garden for a very long time.After traversing the hedge and the jungle of the undergrowth with only a scratched hand and a slightly twisted ankle sustained in an encounter with a deflated but still smiling Spacehopper, Harvey had found himself standing, SAS-style, to one side of the kitchen window, as if about to burst in shooting. Glancing down and observing his beer gut heaving in a way that looked frankly unhealthy, he forced himself to breathe more easily. He was in the garden of an old friend, it was hardly a capital offence. The brick in his hand was less easy to explain.He tried tapping at the window, just to check that the Odds weren't having a quiet afternoon in, and then with the mixed air of fear and interested experimentation, he walked to a safe distance and slung the brick at the central glass panel in the kitchen door. Plan A was that there would be an explosion of glass and a nice brick-shaped hole would appear for him to put his hand through. Luckily, Plan B was to run like a deer as soon as he threw it because, in the event, the pane merely split in an ugly and deafening crack up the middle and the brick landed at his heels.After a pause for thought, spent standing on one foot ready to flee at the slightest sound, Harvey returned from his position in the undergrowth, removed his denim jacket, wrapped the brick in it and began to bash away at the cracked pane. This proved more productive as well as oddly satisfying and within a minute he had made a neat hole for his hand to pass inside. After admiring his handiwork for a while, Harvey dragged himself into the danger of the moment, reached inside and fumbled for a latch. That it was reachable was entirely a matter of good fortune, but reachable it was. And with a troubling sense of this action being both easy and impossible, Harvey found himself opening the door of a stranger's house and stepping inside.He had been inside the house only once before and it had been a mess. The first impression now was that things hadn't changed. Piles of damp newspapers stood incongruously around the sink, and the sink itself had a brown discolouration, a soiling that laid a faint patina of disgust over his insurgent terror. But as he moved on through the cooking area, he realised that, in fact, things had a certain order. Boxes stood open with old and nasty frying pans emerging from them; plates were stacked in reasonably matching piles; knives and long-handled spoons protruded from a carrier bag. The hand of the social services could be seen in the way the base shell of the kitchen was appearing from its years of darkness.As Harvey moved, mouselike, towards the hall he was aware of an almost overwhelming need to defecate. Into his mind flickered a complete story, pictured, perhaps predictably, in comic-strip form: of him rushing upstairs to the toilet, relieving himself, and then finding that the flush was broken. 'The police were able to trace the intruder using DNA samples found at the crime scene . . .' Harvey gave a low gasp of fear that was also, unexpectedly, a sort of hysterical giggle and forced himself to run upstairs.His parents would love this. That was the thought that beset him as he crept, a faint fat shadow, along a landing lit only by the most meagre light from the bedroom windows. Ever since he brought home a presentation book of Brooke Bond Tea cards belonging to his best friend's sister when he was nine he had been perceived as potentially criminal. 'It was only to be expected,' he could almost hear his father saying. 'We always had our suspicions.' There was something rather satisfying about fulfilling so exactly his parents' worst fears. Perhaps he should become homosexual as well, and start supporting Chelsea.He found Bleeder's room without difficulty. It too seemed like his own, unchanged from boyhood. But here the lack of progress seemed less the product of sentimental mothering and more of a generalised neglect. Nothing appeared to have changed in the Odd house for a very long time indeed. Owner ship of the bedroom was confirmed by the poster of Abba hanging above the bed. He knew that poster: Arrival Arrival. White jumpsuits and cowboy boots. In the seventies you could buy it for 50p from any newsagent in the land. It was a poster that would have been out of date by the time Bleeder was ten. It was the sort of poster only someone who had really given up trying would have had. He stood for a moment transfixed. He'd forgotten how tasty Agnetha was. Had Bleeder even realised that? Harvey doubted it. He did the sigh, or a sort of panicky version of it, and moved to the one large cardboard box that stood in the middle of the otherwise stripped room.The box had been sealed neatly with long strips of masking tape and for a moment Harvey felt an odd impropriety in undoing such careful handiwork. That this was an inappropriate concern in a burglar who had already broken a window struck him forcibly and he began tentatively picking at the strips with his fingernails. This took some time. The tape had been layered in thick gouts, one strip on top of another, and Harvey's fingernails were bitten almost comically short. After some ineffectual picking and swearing, he ran back downstairs and returned armed with a long-handled kitchen knife. Panting, but prepared, he slashed the masking tape with inexpert precision. The Superman One Superman One was not inside. What was inside was a very motley collection of items. Maths text books; some electronic devices of unknown use; a hairdryer (when did Bleeder Odd ever wash his hair?); a Dennis Wheatley novel; a picture of Victoria Principal; a packet of condoms (when did Bleeder Odd, etc); three pairs of shoes; a nasty and possibly unsanitary pink teddy bear; and at the very bottom of the box, under some tight-waisted knitwear with stars up the front, a pile of comics. was not inside. What was inside was a very motley collection of items. Maths text books; some electronic devices of unknown use; a hairdryer (when did Bleeder Odd ever wash his hair?); a Dennis Wheatley novel; a picture of Victoria Principal; a packet of condoms (when did Bleeder Odd, etc); three pairs of shoes; a nasty and possibly unsanitary pink teddy bear; and at the very bottom of the box, under some tight-waisted knitwear with stars up the front, a pile of comics.Harvey's heart had started beating too quickly for a man of his girth who is sitting down as he reverently removed the comics one by one. But they were just the typical frayed remnants of a boy's collection, like so many he had been sent for valuation over the years at the shop. No rare first editions, nothing special at all. He read a few pages of an Iron Man Iron Man that he hadn't looked at for years, not really being much of an that he hadn't looked at for years, not really being much of an Iron Man Iron Man fan, and then remembered his predicament and stood up fast. fan, and then remembered his predicament and stood up fast.When upright he found that some of his fear had lifted. The fact that his mission seemed to have failed had removed some of the terror of discovery, as if the criminality had somehow slipped out of his actions now that there was nothing to steal. With great care he put everything back in the box in the right order and then did his best to reseal the tape. That done he made his way back onto the landing. Logic said he should leave now surely Bleeder's room was the likeliest place to look but his future self, the one who had come to him in the restless night and said it was better to be arrested, even go to prison, than to live with uncertainty any longer, was back with him. 'I will make you come back here again if you don't finish this today,' it told him. 'I will send you to reburgle the same house again tomorrow. And just think how much more difficult that will be.' With an irrational desire to punch his own future, Harvey made his way to the next room. It was clearly Mrs Odd's bedroom and was as yet unpacked. It smelled strongly of faeces and talcum powder, reminding Harvey of a great-aunt from his youth who had been both fashionable and incontinent. The idea of Mrs Odd keeping the comic he'd swapped with her son in 1982in her bedside cabinet was pushing reason beyond any natural limit, future self or no future self. But he looked anyway. It wasn't in there. There were lots of lightbulbs and a packet of lemon jelly.Harvey followed his own absence of logic carefully through each room in turn, and once started he was thorough. He looked under beds and inside bathroom cabinets. He opened four more cardboard boxes using the red-handled kitchen knife. None of them contained anything of any interest, or not at least to a burglar. There was a Dukes of Hazzard Dukes of Hazzard baseball cap that Harvey found rather captivating. As he made his way to the stairs it occurred to him that he might find some other object of value: what would he do then? He was surprised but pleased to find that the idea of stealing anything else held no interest for him. Perhaps he wasn't a criminal after all. Perhaps he was merely reclaiming something that belonged to him. Perhaps it was really his to retrieve . . . 'My preciousssss,' Harvey hissed and giggled loudly as he made his way back downstairs. baseball cap that Harvey found rather captivating. As he made his way to the stairs it occurred to him that he might find some other object of value: what would he do then? He was surprised but pleased to find that the idea of stealing anything else held no interest for him. Perhaps he wasn't a criminal after all. Perhaps he was merely reclaiming something that belonged to him. Perhaps it was really his to retrieve . . . 'My preciousssss,' Harvey hissed and giggled loudly as he made his way back downstairs.On the ground floor he followed the same procedure. Most of the fear had now passed, to be replaced by a sort of jumpy boredom. All the boxes contained unpleasant objects that he really had no wish to see, including an extraordinary amount of counterpanes. Did she collect counter panes? And why were so many of them orange candlewick with tassles? Was this some sort of recognised fetish? It might be worth checking on the internet. And when finally he stood in front of the last box in the sitting room, surrounded by damp-smelling bed linen, Harvey realised that he was done. Somewhere he could sense his future self throwing up his hands and smiling: 'Fair do's, you've tried, I'll give you that.' And he would continue to run a perfectly pleasant little comic shop on Old Street rather than a superhero-themed coffee house in Gramercy Park, and that was OK. Maybe it was actually for the best. With a last, almost affectionate glance round the old place (as he now thought of it), Harvey strolled out into the hallway and made for the kitchen. As he did so he was struck by a thought. He hadn't been down to the front door itself. Maybe there was a cupboard there, something like that. So he turned and walked back down the hall, with a sense almost of wanting to prolong what had really been a rather pleasing exercise: a completely new experience and those were rare in his life these days, perhaps too rare, perhaps he should do things like this more often.Turning over the idea of robbing people's houses now and again just to keep his adrenalin levels up, Harvey approached the front door in a mood of benign affection for crime and for criminals as a group. And it was then that he noticed the wooden door on his left and realised with complete suddenness that the house had a cellar. Frozen for a moment, he stood caught between impulses. He had been ready to leave, to turn and stroll nonchalantly out into the garden and fight his way back through the jungle. His first instinct now was to continue with that plan. Who would keep a comic in a cellar? It was probably just a damp hole full of old tools or bits of coal. And he didn't, he really didn't want to go in a cellar right now. All his insouciance left him in a rush. What if someone came in while he was down there? What if he got locked in for ever? What if Bleeder Odd was the psychopath that any comic-strip writer would make him and came back and found Harvey in his basement? The basement where he kept his victims locked in metal cages, hanging upside down. What if Bleeder Odd had never left St Ives and had been living in the basement all this time just waiting for this moment . . . ? Harvey took several deep breaths. 'I know, I know,' he muttered to his future self, and, opening the door, he stepped inside.
Chapter Seven
Well, this was more like it. The darkness was all-embracing and all-disorientating. Even with the tenuous light from the hallway, Harvey's senses were befuddled by the absolute blackness. This surely was what a burglar was meant to feel like. Again it was his parents' faces that swam into Harvey's mind. When he was small his father had liked to tell him tales of how pirates would hide in the local caves and some would get lost in the darkness and never be found. The child Harvey had been frightened by these stories and had questioned their validity. 'Oh yes, it's quite true, dear,' his mother had told him when he asked. 'Only wicked pirates go in dark caves, wicked pirates and naughty boys, of course.' It had been a source of resentment over many years that he had been frightened in this way. And even now he was able to feel a certain annoyance that his first thought on being in this dark place was that pirates might come and get him. He fumbled along the wall for a light switch, trying to keep his mounting terror within rational boundaries. Surely there had to be a light switch? If there wasn't then his future self would have to just accept that he'd done his best. Or to put it another way, his future self could go fuck himself.Still clutching the kitchen knife in one hand, Harvey patted the other along the wall, aware of soft things brushing his fingers that he hoped were spiders' webs (rather than pirates' beards, for instance). After a few edgy moments his fingers discovered an old-fashioned switch and pushed it down. This drowned him in light and switched his fears of the dark to panic as to what this display might do if seen from outside. Moving quickly onto the little square landing at the head of the stairway, Harvey pulled the door almost closed behind him.Stepping forwards, he immediately banged his head on the first of a series of low beams that ran down at about ear height. Ducking and peering before him, he concentrated on making his way down the damp and splintered steps. What if they couldn't support his weight? What if the Odds found him in the morning, dead in the cellar? Or what if they never came down here? What if they shut up the house and Mrs Odd moved to St Ia's and he was never found? What then? Harvey wasn't sure what then, so he just tested each step with his toe while hanging on very tightly to an equally uncertain wooden rail that ran down the wall on his left side. The rail wobbled slightly in his hand and he had a nightmarish vision of the house simply waiting to collapse under the weight of abuse that it had suffered over the years: the Odd years. Perhaps his violation was the last straw, perhaps the house itself would take its revenge. Like in The Haunting The Haunting (graphic novel edition). It seemed to take an age to turn the corner on the stairway and to find his way down into the cellar proper. And he was almost at the bottom and on the cellar floor itself before he dared to raise his eyes from the steps and survey its contents. There was not a lot down there. Clearly it had never been much used. But this was not the thought that came first to Harvey. What was down there was quite enough. In front of him there stood one large cardboard box. Like the others upstairs, it had clearly been sealed but the masking tape had been shredded from its top. This should have caught Harvey's attention but it was mostly fixed on what was beside the box. At first he thought it was a mannequin, some ageing tailor's dummy abandoned on the floor. It was the great circle of darkness around it that told him he was wrong. She was lying on her back, her mouth and eyes open, and at her throat was a long, curved opening. (graphic novel edition). It seemed to take an age to turn the corner on the stairway and to find his way down into the cellar proper. And he was almost at the bottom and on the cellar floor itself before he dared to raise his eyes from the steps and survey its contents. There was not a lot down there. Clearly it had never been much used. But this was not the thought that came first to Harvey. What was down there was quite enough. In front of him there stood one large cardboard box. Like the others upstairs, it had clearly been sealed but the masking tape had been shredded from its top. This should have caught Harvey's attention but it was mostly fixed on what was beside the box. At first he thought it was a mannequin, some ageing tailor's dummy abandoned on the floor. It was the great circle of darkness around it that told him he was wrong. She was lying on her back, her mouth and eyes open, and at her throat was a long, curved opening.Harvey took all this in very slowly. Moving uncertainly, as if wearing rollerskates, he stepped forward into the black pool around her and squatted down beside Mrs Odd. Laying down the kitchen knife, he put one hand on the slimy surface of the floor and reached out to feel her neck. There was no pulse and he knew in some distant place inside that it was ridiculous to think there might be. For a moment he just stayed there next to her, looking at the purpled mouth of the wound and wondering where he had seen something like it. Into his mind came the thought of a sex show he once attended in Amsterdam: the opening in her neck was like some pornographic display put on for his titillation; as if she was posing like this for him. And then he was unexpectedly and violently sick.The sound of his vomiting filled the damp silence of the cellar and came back to him in a muffled echo. It was the sound that roused him and made him stand. For a moment he stood erect, drool running down his chin, feeling as a physical sensation the rising of the panic that was coming, hearing it like the sound of an approaching train. In the moments before its arrival he looked around again, not at the body but at the cardboard box. It was with only a vague, distant aftershock, that he saw, tucked inside the open flap, a mint-condition Superman One Superman One. It was still wrapped in its plastic casing. He moved carefully around the thing that lay on the ground, and picked up the comic. He remembered this cover, he remembered buying it, remembered the day of the swap, when he had haggled this away for a strip of plastic. The comic looked perfect, untouched. He examined the wrapper carefully and as he did so noticed that where he touched it his fingers left vivid crimson smears on the clear plastic. And that is when the panic arrived.Dropping this thing he had thought about every day of his adult life as if it was rubbish, as if it meant nothing at all, he ran for it. Where in descent he had tried every step carefully, on his return he simply flew over them. He charged up the stairs, his feet battering a terrible beat on the exposed wood. He ran headlong along the passageway towards the kitchen, desperate, as if life depended on it, to breathe some air that was not touched by what he had seen. He charged through the kitchen and overturned the box of unsanitary saucepans. They came down with all the sound of Armageddon and he heard himself sob with terror. Hurling the back door open he ran into the jungle. He didn't stumble this time. It was as if he was floating over the uneven ground, as if fear had lifted him free of the normal inconveniences of the everyday. Through the nettles he fled, into the bushes and the brambles, down the little ditch at the end of the garden and into the cul-de-sac. He turned instinctively towards the road, towards aid and civilisation, but then some other instinct, not as deep but equally compelling, made him pause, turn and race the other way. Up the track he ran, the bare boughs of the heavy cedars bringing an early twilight, past the long grasses that lined the path. Over the gate of the school, a vault that used up what little youth he had left, across the rugby pitch, stumbling now in the thick, clogging mud; over the gravel path they used to follow from classes to the gym; and over the low front fence onto the main St Ives road. Without looking he sprinted across and onto the grass verge on the other side. Wheezing now and with cramp in his side he stumbled on for several minutes and then, hearing a car approaching behind him, threw himself, with a final act of will, into a gap in the hedgerow and lay there prostrate among the leaves, gasping like a landed trout.
Chapter Eight
Only when he felt the solid floor beneath him did Harvey raise his eyes from the steps and survey the scene once more. The body was gazing at him with unflinching accusation and he nodded a sort of greeting. 'All right?' He didn't actually say it out loud but he came close. For a nightmarish moment he imagined her replying, 'Hello, Harvey'; he could hear it in his head, her thick Cornish vowels: 'Hello, Harvey.' He tried to focus on the fact that she was no great loss to the species. Callousness and insensitivity had seen him through a number of difficult situations in his life; he could see no obvious reason why they shouldn't work here.He had sat for a long time in the wet grass by the roadside. When he could stand upright again he had run at a lumbering and heart-attacking pace back to his father's car. And then he had driven for a while, following the road towards Truro Cornwall's only city, and a place of great grandeur and metropolitan grace to the boy Harvey. As he drove he found he went that way as if by instinct, seeking as he had learned to do so well in London the safety of the urban environment, the blissful anonymity of crowds. He had wanted to be away from little places, the narrow places of his past, from funny little culs-de-sac with burned-out cars, from new estates where a stranger was watched by half-feral children, and from cellars where steps led down to unimaginable horror. And thankfully there was traffic on the Truro road. The red Ford Fiesta Fling that his father had unwisely but not untypically selected as his mode of transport blended so completely into the background roar that Harvey had felt he was already away, felt he could drive on for miles and never be found, never go back, finally sever those links with a past he never wanted in one swift chop of his hand. But then he had seen the knife.It had crept back into his vision like some glimpsed terror in the corner of the eye. Its red plastic handle so bright and clean against the deep black crimson of the blood. Driving had done what it sometimes did for Harvey, for whom learning to drive and the advent of maturity were linked: it had made him think like a grown-up. He had broken into a house; he had picked up a knife; he had left fingerprints; he had left the knife with his fingerprints on it next to the body of an old woman whose throat had been cut; his fingerprints were on her throat. He was in trouble. And he knew what it was necessary for him to do. Where the road for Truro turns off from the dual carriageway there is a roundabout. Harvey went round it twice. As he whirled, a hundred uncertainties flashed before him from which appeared two clear paths, two exits from his spinning motion: he could take the Truro road, drive straight to the police station, tell all and it would be over. Or he could drive back the way he had come and try to fix things, to make it all right. Twice he went round and then he took the St Ives road.He was tired now and his back and knees were singing. He had been cleaning for some time. A bucket, rubber gloves, a duster and a bottle of Zest he had found under the sink in the kitchen, and with these tools he had begun methodically to remove all traces of himself from the house. The trail he had followed previously he now went over again, wiping himself away. It struck him that in some ways this was what he'd been trying to do ever since he left St Ives twenty years ago: eradicate his traces from the place, and its from him. He was topless, having used his T-shirt to wrap around his hands as he entered the house and this was now tied round his neck, giving him the air of a portly Romany. The measured calm of the seasoned house-breaker that he had affected earlier was long gone and every whisper had become a hunting, every sigh a haunting. By the time he made his furtive way down into the cellar he felt like a sweaty Orestes.He had left the basement till last because he knew his nerve would not hold for long. Now as he stood and faced the worst, his breath came heavy through bared teeth, his mouth open in a strange grimace that he knew would stay when this was over: an expression he had never made before had entered his range. When would he use it again? The taste of beer that wasn't quite right? Josh's morning aroma? A racist joke? To what use would he put this new look that he found on his face? He closed his eyes for a moment then grabbed his sponge cleaner from the bucket and, bending, eradicated his own footprints in the blood. Then he started on the rather neat round pool of sick, which seemed to be keeping itself to itself like a little snobbish pizza. Mixing water with the blood softened it and it ran about his feet in a swirling pattern, creating pretty ice-cream sundaes on the floor. Pizza and ice-cream: his favourite. But the blood running around was bad. It was soaking his trainers. He needed to stand on something so he could clean one set of footprints without creating another. He looked around . . . What could he use? With the makings of a ghoulish grin, he glanced at the cardboard box: he could use the Superman One Superman One, of course he could. Perfect. He could use this priceless treasure of which he had dreamed for so long to soak up the blood. The Superman One Superman One would save him from disaster. Cackling, he stepped across to the cardboard box but then stood nonplussed. The would save him from disaster. Cackling, he stepped across to the cardboard box but then stood nonplussed. The Superman One Superman One was gone. was gone.Harvey struggled with this for a moment. He looked behind the cardboard box. Then he looked in the box at the other stuff that was inside: curtains with pictures of trains on them, a long length of matchbox car track, shoes (there were more shoes in this house than Harvey had ever seen before), various boxes of old plastic toys, an orange counterpane . . . Because he couldn't take anything out of the box without covering it in blood, Harvey leaned right over and almost disappeared into the box as he hunted. But it wasn't there. However much he scrabbled in the illogic of the situation, he could find no trace of it. Rising, he stood in thought for a moment. If it wasn't here and he had definitely dropped it here, then . . . then what? Mechanically he continued to clean: at the last moment remembering to run his duster over Mrs Odd's neck. 'It means, of course, that someone has taken it.' Harvey spoke out loud as he picked up the red-handled kitchen knife from where it lay beside the body and sat down on the bottom step to remove his bloodsoaked shoes. These he wrapped neatly in the T-shirt from around his neck. Then, walking carefully in his socks, he made his way back up the stairs. He gave one last look down as he stood on the little landing step. Had he erased all his prints? His head ached and his knees felt as though he had been praying for days. He nodded, he couldn't think of anywhere else that he had put his hands. He mounted the final flight of steps, switched off the light and padded carefully over the damp carpet and into the kitchen. There he emptied his bucket and washed it out. He rubbed the kitchen knife over and over with the duster and returned it to the plastic bag. Putting the sponge cleaner and the dusters in the bundle with his shoes he took off the rubber gloves and put them carefully back under the sink. Then he stepped out into the garden, pulling the door closed behind him using his T-shirt to hold the handle.The night smelled of the country and of the sea. He stood for a moment in his socks, almost too weary to walk back into the nettles and prickles of the garden, and looked up. A faint blue still sat at the corners of the evening and the stars were dim as if politely waiting for this last vestige of day to fade before they made their entrance. He breathed deeply of the clean air and was about to step into the jungle when behind him he heard a sound, just faintly, of a door closing. So he didn't step into the jungle. He ran like fuck.
Chapter Nine
'Is that you, dear?' The voice seemed to come from a dream of another world, another life that he had once had.'No, it's your secret lover.' His own voice, too, sounded uncanny.His mother chirruped happily, 'Come and have a chat, Harvey. I'm just brewing a pot of tea.''Yeah, I'll be down in a minute.' He ran to the stairs. Denim jacket, buttoned over bare flesh, was not a suitable sight for his mother. Nor were his sodden socks. Nor was the bloody bundle he carried in his arms.'Don't just disappear, will you, darling? We want to see you.''No, Mum, I'll just grab a quick shower.' That used to work.'Oh good idea, love, I'll put the immersion on, although you may have to wait for it to heat up completely but if you're only in there for a few minutes you might be all right, I'm not sure if your father . . .'Harvey left this nuisance to continue by itself and headed for his room. The bundle he put into a carrier bag and placed beside his bed. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. 'Jesus Fucking Christ,' he said very slowly. Carefully he removed the jacket and laid that on the floor. He took off his socks and put them in the carrier bag and then slid it under the bed. After a few moments he made his way to the bathroom and ran the shower. It was cold but he stood under it anyway and scrubbed himself, picking and picking at his fingernails. When he was clean he went back to the bedroom, shut the door and lit a cigarette: the first since the nightmare had begun. Never in human history had that particular mixture of carcinogenic material and nicotine tasted so good. He dragged the smoke into his lungs as if it was feeding him, as if it was nourishment. Eventually he moved to the chest of drawers and found another black T-shirt distinguishable from the first only to a trained expert in comic imagery, and got dressed.'So, what have you been up to today? Nothing dodgy I hope.' His father was in jocular mood and Harvey was not sure that he could cope.'No, just having a bit of a look around.''Well, yes, you've probably forgotten the place, you haven't been down for so long.''Mmm.' Harvey had the newspaper and was pretending to read it, but as usual with his father this didn't seem to reduce the unwanted conversational gambits.'I hope you have left my car as you found it?' Harvey ignored this altogether so his father moved on to more general topics. 'Did you see the new development by the seafront: twenty-two new flats they're putting in. It's going to be wonderful for the area.' Like most country people, Harvey's parents approved enthusiastically of anything that would uglify their area or ruin the environment.'Oh yes, they'll be right on the sea, perfect,' his mother joined in. 'It'll do the town so much good.''Mmm.' The newspaper was a local one and led its front page with a boy-scout jamboree. Harvey couldn't help feeling that tomorrow's edition might be rather more eye-catching.'So, you just wandered about, did you? Didn't see any of your disreputable friends, I hope?''Donald! I'm sure Harvey's friends aren't disreputable, or ... well ... not all of them.''That Jack Cranshaw is very disreputable, was when he was young and still is. Got into drugs and all sorts, didn't he, Harvey?''Er, yeah, I guess.''Totally worthless sort of character. Now he comes down every few months and sponges off his parents. He should be a parent himself by now and instead he's living like a feckless teenager with some girl in Wales.' Like most country people, Harvey's parents were also fascists. Harvey did the sigh and found it oddly satisfying. However unpleasant sitting talking to his parents might be, at least he wasn't cleaning dried blood off a carpet with a corpse in the cellar and possibly a psychopathic killer in the house. And frankly, this was a comfort. That sound had stayed with him. Had he really heard it? The garden had been dark . . . and he had been about dark business. Perhaps he had imagined the click of a door closing. Perhaps the breeze through the kitchen door . . . but there had been no breeze. He shifted uneasily in his chair and reached for his cigarettes.'Another one? You keep Marlboro going on your own, you do.' Harvey didn't bother to look up.'Piss off, Dad.''You'll kill yourself with them.''Your father's right, Harvey. I was reading a piece in the Mail Mail about it. There are so many ways to stop now. Lots of different methods, it's really not that difficult.' about it. There are so many ways to stop now. Lots of different methods, it's really not that difficult.''He doesn't want to stop. If he wanted to stop he'd stop tomorrow. It's not hard, a bit of will power is all you need. But he doesn't want to stop. He wants to kill himself . . .''No, Donald, don't say that. But, Harvey, they make a sort of thing you can put on your arm. It's like a sort of plaster and it feels like smoke going into your arm, it's quite reasonably priced . . .''Right. Thank you.' Harvey put the paper down and stood up.'Oh, are you going out, dear?''Yes.' Harvey surprised himself. 'I wasn't, but obviously I have to if I'm going to get any chance of peace or non-lunatic conversation.''Oh charming!' His mother chuckled. 'Well, take your jacket. It's not as warm as it was. It's not as warm down here as it is in London.''That's right, Mum, you have a different climate in Cornwall.''He hasn't got a proper jacket. Denim isn't a proper jacket. How is that a jacket? It's not waterproof, it doesn't have a lining. It doesn't even cover your backside. It's not a jacket. If you want a jacket, Harvey, borrow one of mine. There's one on the peg. That'll keep you warm when you're out gallivanting . . .''Thanks, Dad. If I want to look like a reject from a special-needs charity bazaar, I'll definitely take you up on it.' Harvey picked up his cigarettes, left the room, put on his denim jacket and ventured back out into the night.'Bye, dear, don't be too late back.' He could hear the voice still calling to itself as he walked away down the road.
Chapter Ten
Harvey's reactions were concerning him. There was a feeling of studied calm to how he had behaved since his return home. He had sat on his bed and he had sat in the armchair. He hadn't shivered, or experienced panic attacks. Could it really be as easy as this to commit crimes? Perhaps it was. Perhaps the idea he had always had of criminals as abandoned creatures, living on the fringes of the civilised world, was quite misplaced. Perhaps they were just like him: popping out to do terrible deeds in the afternoon and getting home again in time for macaroni cheese and Star Trek Voyager Star Trek Voyager.He walked out from his parents' house onto Trelawney Road, close to where Mrs Odd would have moved to if she had lived. She and his parents would have been near neighbours: something about keeping all the strange people in one place came into his mind but he ignored it and walked on. The hill ran down towards the town centre and from there he could see the whole sweep of the bay, from Porthminster Point out to the north of the town, along St Ives's own beachfront to the harbour and then away to The Island to the south. For all that he felt St Ives represented repression, misery, bourgeois values and empty traditionalism, it still held a certain picturesque charm. He had been away long enough to recognise that. The town nestled neatly as if held with a mother's love in the two arms of the bay. And it had held him. He was aware for a moment of just how safe this place had always felt. That's why he had wanted to leave it, of course. But now? Did it still feel that way? Harvey walked down Church Road, past the church where he had gone as a child to Sunday school and where he had first learned to smoke; past the little car park with the great white wall where he had once sprayed the Batman logo in gold paint; and down onto the high street where he and Rob and Jack used to go shoplifting on a Saturday afternoon. 'My life of crime,' Harvey muttered. It was odd to think, now that he had time to think, that the most criminal thing he had ever done had happened in safe little St Ives. And it had happened this afternoon. What he needed, he realised, was a drink. Several drinks.St Ives had a lot of pubs. Most made their money in the summer but they all stayed open throughout the year. In theory, there was a wide selection to choose from, but like most people in their home town Harvey could only really think of going into a handful. And all carried baggage. There was the Lifeboat on the harbourfront where tonight there would be a juke box and on Fridays a local band; that was where he had first thrown up into a public toilet and first dragged self-consciously on a joint. There was the Golden Lion, which would be quieter but might contain one or two hard lads with shaven heads and tattoos; that was where he and Rob had fought and won against two rugby players from the rival secondary school. Or there was the Blue Bar, which would be the quietest of all with a bit of folk music playing on CD; and that was where he had taken Jill Penhaligon on the night her parents were away at a funeral, so there was somewhere to go back to, for the first time. And all these memories were tied up with the places and meant that he needed to get the choice right. And although a part of him felt that distractions were just what he needed or that toughing it out might be the best option, he went to the Blue Bar because a larger part knew that he needed to think and to feel safe and to be cared for by the gentler ghosts he would find there.The lounge bar of the Blue Bar had been redecorated since he was last there, the walls painted in a pale lime green and the floor laid to stripped pine. The walls were enlivened by pictures by a local artist, which featured beach scenes where there was a lot of blue for the sky and a lot of blue for the sea and a tiny strip of yellow in the middle for the sand. They were not like any Cornish beach Harvey had ever seen. He found them depressing. The Blue Bar had always been more of a wine bar than a pub and there had been a time, around the age of sixteen, when Harvey had considered wine bars the height of sophistication. On a damp night in February it was almost deserted and just seemed rather hopeless and displaced. The bare whitewood tables and chairs had the appearance of a set of deck-chairs laid out on some forgotten liner. He ordered a pint of Guinness from a bored student and found a corner. What he wanted was peace and he had found it. It crossed his mind that it was possible to have too much peace because his thoughts began at once to crowd in. He might be arrested tonight. When he returned home his mother might be in tears and his father nodding knowingly. There might be a brief explanation, a reading of rights . . . things from The Bill The Bill. And then he might get in the back of a car and be taken to a cell to spend the night. And the next night and the next. This was real. He could be arrested for concealing a murder . . . was that a crime? Harvey felt there was probably a more official term for it but that was basically it. He had concealed a murder. And not some drink-driving or a hit and run but a real, old-school, Agatha Christie, body-in-the-library, suspicious-vicar sort of murder. Like most comic fans, Harvey was not drawn to real drama. He contemplated the enormity of what had happened for several minutes with the aid of his Irish assistant. He would, he realised, need to get very drunk indeed. So he rose quickly to get a second pint, and it was then that he saw her.'Oh, hello.' Maisie Cooper smiled at him and he wondered how she could have been so near to him without him sensing her presence.'Er, hi. Where did you spring from?''Oh, I just got here. It's nice to see you again.''Oh right, you too. You on your own?' Harvey tried to keep the hope out of his voice.'No, Jeff 's gone for a pee and the others are on their way. We've all been somewhere else, the Lion, I think, but we're doing the rounds.'How did she manage to convey in these simple words just how grim this itinerary had been and just how much better it would have been if Harvey had been with her? He did not know but he certainly believed he heard all of it in her voice. He caught the student's eye. 'What are you having?''Oh, it's OK, you were enjoying a bit of peace, by the look of it, and now you're going to be disturbed.''That's all right. I'm happy to be disturbed by you.' How clumsy and crap was that? He blushed at his own ineptitude and then blushed more to find himself blushing.She smiled at him. 'OK, I'll have a white wine, thanks.''Right.' She understood his embarrassment. She was someone who understood things. He immediately felt that was what he most needed right now. At which point the pub door opened and half his past fell through it.'Bollocks, you can have a double or nothing, you slacker ... H!''H!''H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H, H!' It became a chant.'Er, all right, lads.' Harvey felt, strangely, that while he wished he hadn't spent the afternoon wading around in blood it was still perhaps preferable to having spent it with his friends.'Where've you been, man?' Steve threw his arm around Harvey's shoulder and, reeling, almost carried them both to the floor.'Avoiding you.' Harvey disentangled himself. 'How many have you had?''Not enough. We're on the doubles tonight, Harvey boy. Pints and doubles only. We are getting pissed!' This last was shouted at great volume and was greeted with a cheer from the other twenty or so reunionists who had poured in behind the vanguard. 'We are drinking the town dry!' Steve yelled again and then leaned himself heavily on the bar. 'Bar, beerman,' he called.'Steve's getting going well.' Rob joined Harvey and Maisie Cooper. 'I don't think he gets out that much these days what with the third baby. So he's letting his hair down.''Yeah. That's not all . . .' Harvey wished he could have made the quiet moment with Maisie mean something before they all arrived, but there hadn't been time.'And we've had quite an afternoon,' Rob went on, slurring himself a little. 'And guess who we had a drink with earlier? Only Bleeder Odd. I drank with Bleeder Odd, I can die a happy man.''You saw Bleeder?''Yeah. He was in the Bell, wearing a suit and chatting on his mobile phone, for all the world as if he was a real human being. So we all bought him a pint. I think we owed him a few, you know what I mean? When we left he had about twenty pints in front of him on the table. So now we've made up for all the years of misery.' He chuckled happily.'At it again, Briscow? You can't leave my wife alone, can you?' Jeff Cooper, appearing through the crowd, was smiling slightly less than the last time he made this joke. 'I thought that was you skulking in the corner when we came in. Only a sad bastard drinks on his own, mate. And you are a bit of a sad bastard, aren't you? Look at you, you look like a fucking weirdo. Why don't you grow a decent amount of hair and buy some clothes that aren't designed for teenagers?''Er, yeah, OK, Dad.' Harvey reached for his drink but found he hadn't got one. For once this was a good thing as it meant he could focus on that rather than on Jeff.'Pint of Guinness and a white wine when you've a minute, mate,' he called and turned to his little group. 'Drinks?'They sat in the corner, Harvey and Maisie and Rob and Steve, who came to join them. Jeff had a chair at the table and no one took it but he spent most of the evening in the doorway with the rugger buggers, as Harvey had always known them, shouting and at times singing in a fashion that Harvey could only feel was not conducive to marital bliss. Mostly, though, he was unaware of Jeff or of anyone else but her. Steve and Rob were debating politics and football and beer and music, and it was a conversation he could have recited by heart before they began it. So he talked to Maisie Cooper. It struck him as funny, when he had time to think of it afterwards, that when the evening started he would have said that nothing short of an earthquake could drive the thought of that afternoon from his head, yet for long periods it hardly entered his mind so complete was his immersion in her. What did they talk about? As he walked home, Harvey asked himself that but found no obvious answer. Or none that could account for how good it had felt to do the talking. And the listening. She was interesting, she knew about stuff. And not just beer and sport and music but about people and ideas, stuff that he used to think was important but which somehow got lost in the comic shop and the growing older and not really getting what he wanted or even knowing what that was. When occasionally Rob or Steve had tried to join their conversation, usually when the other of them had staggered to the bar or the toilet, she had been kind and open but had made it clear, to Harvey at least, that she preferred to return to the one-to-one as soon as possible. Once or twice Harvey had caught in Steve or Rob's eye an enquiring look, familiar from another century, but he had ignored it. Let them think what they wanted, he had no answer to those looks because he had no idea what was happening. As he wandered, cold but smiling, back up Trelawney Road at nearly midnight it struck him that life-changing days come along only very rarely. There seemed at that moment a good chance that this might be one for two entirely unrelated reasons. It made him smile and, because he had been on the whisky for a nightcap, it made him sing. So he ended the evening singing a plaintive, if somewhat uncertain, solo of 'Reeling in the Years' by Steely Dan (it had been playing in the pub): when only a few hours earlier he would have laid pretty long odds against ever singing again.
Chapter Eleven
'Haaarvey! Time to rise and shine. You've got a party to go to today.'Fumbling in the dark for cigarettes, Harvey heard the voice and closed his eyes very tight. Everything was wrong. His mouth felt as though someone had come in during the night and used it as a toilet: there was unknown but malodorous matter at the back of his throat yet a sort of slimy, unnatural wetness on his tongue. His head seemed to have been remoulded so that it now came to a point in the blinding pain between his eyeballs. His belly lay about him, jellified and sagging to the sides, forming a ring around his prone form. From hours too early to consider, his father had been busily walking along the passage outside his room making a noise. This was a familiar practice and was one of a number of reasons why Harvey very rarely went home for holidays. Today, Donald Briscow had been calling. 'Do you know where that drill is, Ann? I need that particular one. I want to put a screw in the bedroom, for the picture. I've been meaning to fix that picture for ages . . .' And his mother had been calling in reply and then there had been the banging and slamming of a drill being found and then, of course, there had been the drilling, protracted and extended. And then there had been more calling and his mother had come along to admire the picture . . . Harvey, lying now on his back, lit a cigarette, opening his eyes to tiny slits and then closing them again very quickly.'You won't want to miss it, dear, it's your last day.'He tried to remember his dreams. They had been filled not with pretty, attentive women in wine bars finding him fascinating, but with dark passageways and shadows. He had been running, he remembered, running into . . . that was it, into his own shop. But the lights were off and he could hardly see. There was a sense of unease. Something was wrong. There were people there who shouldn't be there. Something terrible had happened. And then it all came back in a rush. 'Shit.' The air was cold on his bare arms and he tucked himself tightly under the quilt, doing his best not to burn more holes in the cover, which already showed its history as a drunken smoker's blanket. For a few minutes all he wanted to do was crawl deeper into the dark, warm, somewhat smelly cave he had made for himself, just stay there until it went away. But then a rush of adrenalin forced him to sit up, cry out as the point at the front of his head collided with the day and then scramble upright. He needed to know what was going on. Never before in his life had he prayed so hard for so little. All he wanted in life right now was for absolutely nothing to happen.The human brain collects and stores information in extraordinary abundance just on the off chance that it might be useful. Harvey would not have said that he knew when the St Ives Chronicle St Ives Chronicle was delivered to his parents' house each morning. Indeed, he would have said he had always actively avoided knowing anything at all about St Ives's shambolically amateurish local paper. Yet at 10a.m. prompt he was waiting on the mat and he was not disappointed. Horrified but not disappointed. The murder was splashed across all three columns of the front page and showed all the grammatical errors and inaccurate speculation of the late, replacement front-page lead. Harvey wondered vaguely what they would have led with if they hadn't got this in time. His mind played wistfully with coffee mornings and new church roofs. The story was supported by a rather fuzzy photograph of Bleeder's house looking eerily like every crime scene Harvey had ever seen on TV. The police had been called to the house at 6.30p.m. by the deceased's son, Charles Odd. His mother had been killed with a kitchen knife. There were signs of breaking and entering and police were seeking an intruder. They had not yet established any motive for the crime. The killer had made elaborate efforts to cover his tracks but the police were able to say that some evidence had been found at the crime scene . . . Jesus. Harvey clutched the paper to him and felt a wave of nausea sweep across his hangover and carry it up to a higher level. He doubled over and clutched onto the wall, then straightened up, eyes squeezed shut, breathing hard. was delivered to his parents' house each morning. Indeed, he would have said he had always actively avoided knowing anything at all about St Ives's shambolically amateurish local paper. Yet at 10a.m. prompt he was waiting on the mat and he was not disappointed. Horrified but not disappointed. The murder was splashed across all three columns of the front page and showed all the grammatical errors and inaccurate speculation of the late, replacement front-page lead. Harvey wondered vaguely what they would have led with if they hadn't got this in time. His mind played wistfully with coffee mornings and new church roofs. The story was supported by a rather fuzzy photograph of Bleeder's house looking eerily like every crime scene Harvey had ever seen on TV. The police had been called to the house at 6.30p.m. by the deceased's son, Charles Odd. His mother had been killed with a kitchen knife. There were signs of breaking and entering and police were seeking an intruder. They had not yet established any motive for the crime. The killer had made elaborate efforts to cover his tracks but the police were able to say that some evidence had been found at the crime scene . . . Jesus. Harvey clutched the paper to him and felt a wave of nausea sweep across his hangover and carry it up to a higher level. He doubled over and clutched onto the wall, then straightened up, eyes squeezed shut, breathing hard.'Here, don't scrunch up my paper.' Donald Briscow strode out into the hall and took the Chronicle Chronicle from him, pulled a face, and straightened it out carefully. 'Some of us want to know what's going on in the world.' Harvey willed his breathing under control. from him, pulled a face, and straightened it out carefully. 'Some of us want to know what's going on in the world.' Harvey willed his breathing under control.'Ann! Ann! Look at this.' Briscow senior was appalled. 'England slump in Pakistan . . . outrageous.' He ambled off muttering and Harvey leaned against the wall, letting the wave pass, letting it flow back in lesser form, letting it slacken and ebb away. . . . outrageous.' He ambled off muttering and Harvey leaned against the wall, letting the wave pass, letting it flow back in lesser form, letting it slacken and ebb away.'I've cooked you a fry-up, Harvey. Sausage, bacon, kidneys and some black pudding we had left over from last week. Come along in and eat up, it'll do you good and get you ready for the party.'Harvey made his way into the kitchen and sat very carefully at the table. His mother placed this butcher's shop in front of him and he contemplated it with Mrs Odd's throat in his mind. 'There's been a murder, Harvey.''Yes the Pakistanis are murdering us.' His father came and joined Harvey at the table.'I'll get you a cuppa, Donald. Yes, someone Odd up by the new estates near Trehendricks. I don't mean odd, I mean Odd, it's spelled O.D.D., you see? Killed by an intruder. Isn't that awful?' Harvey's mother smacked her lips excitedly. 'You'd think we were in London.''Yes, you bring trouble with you, don't you, Harvey? If you are going to do things like this I wish you'd do it up in the city not down here.' Mr Briscow was chuckling.'Oh dear, that's not funny,' said Mrs Briscow, chuckling also. 'This poor woman killed in her own bed . . .''In bed?' Harvey, who was still contemplating his breakfast, roused himself for a moment.'Well, wherever she was.''In the cellar.' Mr Briscow had the paper. 'He cut her throat in the cellar. Now that's plain evil, I don't know how you can say he shouldn't be put down for that, Harvey. Killed like an animal that's what should happen to him. It would stop this sort of thing from happening all the time. But oh no, the bleeding hearts want to give him counselling and let him out after twenty minutes so he can do it again. These people are evil, Harvey, and they should be put out of their misery.''Oh Christ.' Harvey put an undercooked lamb's kidney in his mouth and tried to chew. It tasted simply of meat, he could feel the blood leaking onto his tongue. A grimace filled with exhaustion crossed his face. He hadn't realised how tired he was.'What's wrong with that, Harvey?' His mother was scandalised. 'That's lovely, healthy food that is. You should eat that up, it's what you need.''Yes, none of this vegetarian rubbish you get up in London. Alfalfa sprouts and soya beans? They're not sprouts and they're not beans. Should be done under the trade descriptions act. Simple as that.'Harvey focused for a rare moment on what his parents were saying. He had sometimes tried to picture London as they viewed it: a place of constant violence where no one ate anything but tiny portions of vegetables, before going off to watch pornography and take drugs. It actually wasn't that far from his experience of it. He tried to smile and then grimaced again as it made his head hurt. He put a piece of black pudding in his mouth and then, realising too late that this was a more serious proposition than he had expected, he started to chew.'It says the son, Charles Odd (35) why do they have to tell us how old people are all the time? What do we care how old he is? went to Trehendricks . . . Well, Harvey, that would mean he was in your year.' Mr Briscow looked at his son with genuine interest for the first time Harvey could remember, and Mrs Briscow jumped up and whipped round to check the facts over his shoulder.'So it would. Charles Odd, Harvey, you must have known him. Now let me think, do we know a Charles . . . Was there a Charles in your football team? No, that was a Christopher, wasn't it? Charles? Charles? Do you know him, Harvey? You must!'Overwhelmed by the experience of the black pudding and troubled by his parents' enthusiasm, Harvey nodded. 'Yeah,' he managed, still struggling with stray pieces of skin between his teeth. 'I knew him but I never really hung round with him at all. But, yeah. I saw him at the reunion on Saturday . . .''You saw him at the reunion!' Both parents pounced like hungry seagulls on this titbit of news. 'You saw him on Saturday and on Sunday his mother was killed,' Mrs Briscow said triumphantly. Harvey frowned.'So what?' he demanded. 'Everyone there saw him. It's no crime to have seen him.''Don't get defensive, Harvey. You'll only cast further suspicion on yourself.''Piss off, Dad.''If you did it you may as well come clean.''Look, you may find that funny-''But, Harvey, perhaps the police will want to interview you.' Mrs Briscow's eyes were shining.'Why the fuck ... ?''Harvey!''Language, boy, you're not in London now.''Why the fuck would the police want to interview me? I saw him briefly at the reunion. We hardly exchanged two words. Why the fuck . . . ?''You spoke to him! Harvey, I thought you said you didn't know him. You spoke to him and the next day his mother is killed.''Jesus Christ . . .' Harvey felt suddenly that this would never end. Why had he come to this awful reunion in this crappy little town to be with these ghastly people who asked him impossible questions at breakfast and fed him terrible meats that tasted of death? He shuddered bodily.'Eat your breakfast, dear. It'll do you good and get you ready for the party. Now, tell us about Charles Odd. What did you talk about at the reunion?'Harvey filled his mouth with black pudding. It seemed the easiest way to stop himself from crying out loud.
Chapter Twelve
The worst aspect of growing older was when habits became traditions. The lunch party had become another one: after every reunion they went to Steve's and stood around in his sitting room, drinking too early and feeling uncomfortable. This unease was usually added to for Harvey by the fact that Steve had two children, now risen to three, and he had no gift with children. Even though his interests were, by his own admission, almost exclusively juvenile, he did not enjoy sharing them with, well . . . juveniles. And he hated fucking Pokemon and that always created a clash. Today, however, he hardly gave the kids a thought. Indeed, he felt quite ready to pretend to be a train, or build something out of toilet rolls or even watch Japanese pocket animals if it was required of him. He was feeling a powerful and passionate desire for normality. He wanted to be bored.Looking back on the party afterwards, Harvey found it very hard to fix his emotional reactions. He had arrived with so much to think about, more really than he had ever had before, but he spent much of the early period talking about sex with men less knowledgeable in that area than himself and such men are not easily found. How this happened was not altogether clear. He had arrived seeking boredom and the absence of incident and at first had found it in abundance. But then someone had mentioned the murder. A discussion of Bleeder and his mother had begun and Harvey had suddenly felt a desperate need to stop it, as if between them the reunionists were about to solve the crime and point the finger at him. So he had mentioned, pretty much at random, that it might be a sex killing: that perhaps the local press was being delicate to spare Bleeder's feelings. This led to a general expression of doubt that anyone would wish to seek sexual congress with old Mrs Odd. And Harvey, whether through the desire to move the conversation into other areas or through some obscure gallantry, felt compelled to defend the old as potential sex targets. This had led to the suggestion, from Steve, that perhaps Harvey liked 'a bit of scrag-end'. From here the conversation had taken a personal turn and Harvey had found himself becoming red in the face and defensive. 'I do not have any interest in screwing old ladies, you fucking arsehole' were the exact words he was speaking into a silent room populated by, among others, two children aged six and three and a babe-in-arms, when Maisie Cooper arrived. There was a long silence penetrated by sniggering from the men grouped around Harvey.'Well, that's good to know Harvey.' Jeff Cooper had also arrived. 'But your mother must be devastated.'Many smokers feel angry about the bans and prohibitions around their habit. But Harvey had always rather welcomed them. Being part of a segregated minority, being oppressed, was something he had quietly dreamed of through most of his adult life. Nothing too harsh, of course, not racism or lack of human rights, but the minor grievances of being a smoker in a non-smoking world suited him rather well. And for this reason he felt an unfair but real animus against Steve for being liberal and open-minded enough to have ashtrays all around his sitting room. What was the matter with him? Didn't he care about his children? No one in London would dream of behaving in such a decadent manner. What Harvey craved was to get out into the peace of the garden, turn his jacket up against the cold, perhaps moan a little, certainly do the sigh, and have a long miserable smoke. Instead, he was cornered by a bunch of men discussing sexual fetishism. 'And what about vacuum cleaners?' Rob was saying. 'Who discovered that one, that's what I'd like to know,' when she came over and joined them. 'Hello, Maisie,' Rob broke off to greet her. 'We are just talking about having sex with household implements,' he added helpfully, 'in case you have any interests in that area.'There was a collective leer in which Harvey steadfastly refused to join.Maisie smiled. 'No, I prefer garden tools to be honest. Have you seen the garden, Harvey?''Er, no,' Harvey lied loudly to cover the sound of melodramatic intakes of breath from the circle around him.'Be gentle with him, Maisie. He's new at this, he may not be ready for the lawnmower. Stick to the shears . . .'He followed her out through the open French windows.The day had taken a turn towards rain and a light spittle darkened his denim jacket. They walked round the side of the house and found some shelter under a denuded willow tree. She took a cigarette from him and he had to cup his hands round hers to make a wind-break. For a moment it was as if he was holding her hands in his own, as if he was sheltering her. 'Thanks.' she looked at him and he dropped his eyes to concentrate on lighting his own cigarette. Then he looked up and met her gaze. He shivered. He had not seen her outside before, the wind was flicking her autumnal hair out from its neatness and into a wilder frame for her face. It was like watching her lose her civilisation for a second, watching her animalise. He groaned. 'God, you're lovely.' It was the first time he had said anything of the kind and she looked troubled by it, but he did not take it back.'Thanks, but you shouldn't say that.'He wondered if he had spoken too much or too soon, but really he didn't care. It was not a day for worrying about the niceties. 'Does he tell you that? Jeff, I mean. He should tell you every hour. If you were mine I'd tell you every hour.' Looking back that evening, Harvey found it hard to imagine that he had actually said these words to another human being. He was forced to wonder if perhaps being involved in a major crime had somehow achieved an alchemical reaction in him: transformed him into the dashing and irresistible lover he had always dreamed of being. If so, it was a terrible price, but he was not at this moment sorry to pay it.'No, he doesn't tell me that, and nor should you.' She said it as a criticism but he heard the longing in it and felt his stomach turn over. He was suddenly aware how much he wanted her. It was hard to remember anything that he had ever wanted so much. Except, of course, the Superman One Superman One. He pulled a face and turned away to look into a different emotion: he could see again the plastic cover and it was stained with bloody fingerprints. 'It's funny, I came down here with Jeff on sufferance. I thought I was going to absolutely hate it.''And you don't?' He hadn't cleaned the fingerprints off because it wasn't there. He could feel the nausea again, the sudden certainty that things weren't going to be all right.'Not completely, no. Not completely.'Harvey turned back but found she was not looking at him. She had turned too so they had been standing for a moment back to back. He knew that this was a moment. But it was a terribly wrong moment. If he said the right thing to her now he might get what he had just realised he wanted more than anything else. Even that. Especially that. Shit. There had been blood all over his hands. He could feel it on his fingers, feel that sticky, runny, KFC quality it had as he cleaned up. He shook his head from side to side, uncaring of the hangover that still hung like a net curtain around his skull, like that grey net curtain. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 'Oh Christ, Maisie, I don't know what to do.' It came out unexpectedly, as a sort of strangled cry, and he could feel an actual sob in it. He was almost crying and he never cried, or only at ET ET, never at real stuff and now he was going to cry in front of a woman he was desperate to impress. 'Oh Jesus Christ.' But, completely unexpectedly, the horror of blood and death worked wonderfully in his favour. Because within a second, she was in his arms.'Oh Harvey,' she responded. And even Harvey himself could see that he might have had a better name at that moment, and he could also see that what he had lacked all these years in his dealings with women was depth and that he had just acquired a massive amount of it, quite by chance and overnight.'Oh God, you're wonderful.' He was also old enough to know that, whatever the circumstances, in moments like this absolute abandonment was the only right course of action. So he lost himself in her extraordinary hair. She smelled like warm honey and he thanked a god he had never believed in that he'd had a shower that morning. After that, he just forgot everything and let her claw herself tight against him as if he might be a buffer against all the torments of the world. And perhaps he pulled her tight for exactly matching reasons. So they clung for a long moment in each other's arms like fighters who have thrown their swords away and put all the trust they have simply in their shields. And that is where Jeff Cooper found them, of course, when he came looking for his wife.It was an ugly scene, not improved by the fact that all Harvey's friends came out of the French windows and peeped round the side of the house to watch. Jeff went for Harvey with real violence and Harvey, to his shame, forgot his protective role and ran for it. He ran about the garden like a large, ungainly Labrador, dodging round trees and at one point using the shed as a barrier: him going one way round, Jeff the other.'You fucking, miserable bastard.' Jeff had a way of speaking that was low and mean when he was angry, even when he was moving fast, and Harvey heard in it the sound of his own suffering. He was aware of how silent everything else was. Why wasn't anyone saying 'Come on, Jeff, leave it, he's not worth it . . .', that sort of thing? Why wasn't she saying anything? But all seemed rendered mute by the vehemence, the unarguability of Jeff 's anger. With a sudden realisation, Harvey knew that Jeff had wanted to do this for a long time; that though they had pretended to friendship at times because Harvey had been popular at school through the comics, and Jeff through the rugby, really they had hated each other, sneering beneath the banter, disrespecting each other's routes to cool. And now Jeff had found the mother and father of all excuses for doing what he'd been longing to do. If Harvey had had time to consider he would probably have been on Jeff 's side. He actually had quite strict morals about men stealing their friends' wives, it was like not buying your round or shagging women who were really pissed. However, he did not have time to give it much thought because he was busy in flight. There was, briefly, time for him to think what an extraordinary few days he was having and to wonder if perhaps everything dramatic and life-changing that ever happened to him was going to happen over one long-weekend. And then with a horrid inevitability, he was caught.It happened as he hurtled back past the willow tree. He had formulated the vague plan that he would run down the side of the house and into the front garden and away down the road. So he had dashed behind the shed again to mislead Jeff and once he was out of sight, Harvey had come at speed, panting hard, down the lawn under the willow boughs (and it isn't easy to run fast doubled over, but he attempted it) and out the other side. However, Jeff, who was a flanker and used to chasing things, had not been completely fooled and appeared very quickly from the shed diversion. He then made the simple manoeuvre of running close to the wall of the house, thus avoiding the tree altogether and because he didn't need to double up, caught Harvey just as he was emerging from its protection. He hit him hard in the stomach and Harvey, who was already gasping like an asthmatic at an orgy, felt as if he had suddenly been placed in a bubble with no air inside at all, a bubble vacuum that would lift up into the sky and float him away from this terrible scene. As he doubled over, Jeff hit him again full in the face, catching him in the right eye, but Harvey hardly felt this second blow. Everything in him was trying to remember how to breathe. As he crashed to earth, the grass tickled his nose and he was momentarily back on the roadside near Bleeder's house, he had put bloody fingers on the comic and the comic had vanished. How do things vanish? Like this perhaps . . . In the bubble he was drifting on the air, the ground felt pillowy soft, as if he might sink down into it. Perhaps the bubble would go down not up, sucked and swallowed by the world. He knew that he had been kicked and that after that, perhaps spurred by the thought that two murders were too many for one reunion, the other partygoers had been galvanised into action and had dragged Jeff away. Distantly, he could hear her saying 'I hate you, it's over . . .', stuff like that. For a moment, he wondered if she was talking to him and then he knew she wasn't and felt glad.
Chapter Thirteen
Steve's spare bedroom had an alien cleanliness that Harvey found restful. There were white built-in wardrobes with gold knobs. There was a matching dressing table with fancy ornamentation around the legs, which Harvey characterised, after a moment's thought, as Barbie-style. The walls were of pale peach and enlivened with pastel artworks involving mice in Victorian clothing. One of the old crowd, Jessica, who had married Bob from Bristol who was in property and couldn't hold his drink, had trained as a nurse. She was kind and gentle and tenderly put her hands on his face, on his belly, and on his side where he'd been kicked. Harvey got a partial erection despite himself and hoped it didn't show. Then she left him alone for a while and he lay on his back looking at the pale pink ceiling. It occurred to him that perhaps this was how people coped in wartime: so many troubling things happened to them in such a short space of time that their brains began to blend one into the next. The mind sort of stopped bothering to process them and just let things happen. That was how he felt: as if he had passed some watershed beyond which nothing really mattered, a place of Zen peace. The last thing Nurse Jessica asked him as she left was 'Are you all right?' and he murmured some non-committal acknowledgement. But in truth he wasn't at all sure if he was all right or not. The feeling of being in a bubble and floating had remained after he got his breath back. He had a sense of potential pain. At some point his eye, his belly and his side were really really going to hurt. But for now he was becalmed, drifting in a pink and peach sea, and he floated into a deep and untroubled sleep.It was Steve that woke him after about two hours. 'All right, H?' He was standing by the bed looking worried and Harvey wondered for a moment what the cause of his concern was. Perhaps it was something to do with that God-awful drilling that his dad had been doing under the bed, which seemed to have cut him open from the side. Then the dream lifted and he raised himself up and yelped. Shit. Three quite distinct reasons for extreme concern flew simultaneously into his brain, driving out the dream entirely.'Shit. Steve, where the fuck is Bleeder?''Eh?''Shit. I mean, where the fuck is Maisie?''She's gone. She left after the fight. Jeff went too. I think they were breaking up.' Steve sat on the edge of the bed. 'I hope this doesn't mean you won't come down again, H. I hope this hasn't spoiled our parties for you. We look forward to them, really do . . .''What? Look, Steve, when did she go? Where did she go? I should have . . . done something.''What, like get yourself even more kicked?' Steve chuckled vaguely. 'Don't worry, Maisie can look after herself. They'll have gone home to thrash it out. How are you feeling?''Me? Oh peachy.' Harvey took a line through the wallpaper. 'Really pinky peachy, Steve. How are you, mate?''Oh, I'm all right. But you are a stupid cunt.''Eh?''Trying to get off with Jeff Cooper's bird? You must be completely bloody bonkers. Ten out of ten for guts, mate, but minus five for sense. He was going to kill you if we hadn't pulled him off.''Yeah, I know.' Harvey ferreted for his cigarettes and seeing that his jacket was on the white and gold chair by the bed, reached over and yelped again. 'I must get the name of your decorator,' he muttered, moving much more slowly. 'So, what's happening now downstairs? Any other dramas?''Well, yes and no really. That's why I came up.''What?' Harvey looked at him with some desperation, surely there couldn't possibly be anything else.'Well, it's just . . . well, I thought you must have heard, from what you said when I came in . . .''What?'Steve lowered his voice. 'Bleeder's here.''He's what?''Bleeder Odd, you know, Charles Odd as he insists he's called. He's downstairs.''But his mum just got murdered.' Having fumbled in his jacket pocket, Harvey had managed to light an extremely squashed cigarette, which now stuck to his dry bottom lip as he opened his mouth to gape at Steve.'I know. Fuck knows why he's come.''Did you invite him?' Harvey grabbed a decorative potpourri from the dressing table to use as an ashtray.'Yeah, we bumped into him yesterday lunchtime, on the piss-up. I was a bit smashed even then and I'm afraid I was a bit rude to him.''Why, what did you say?''I said I was sorry he couldn't be allowed to join us last night because he was too odd, but if he'd like to come round today we would be more than happy to receive him. Something like that.''Sweet.' Harvey buried his head in his hands and very nearly burned himself. His lungs hurt as he dragged on his cigarette and he grimaced but did not remove it from his mouth.'It's just, I thought because you knew him better than the rest of us, you might like to come downstairs. It's a bit awkward having him here, to be honest. I don't know what to talk to him about.''What do you mean I knew him better? I've never known him any better than . . . oh, hi, Blee . . . Charles.' Bleeder had entered the room and was striding towards the bed.'Oh, all right, mate?' Steve leapt to his feet and made for the door at speed, passing Bleeder on the way. He attempted a half-hearted slap on the back, missed and moved off. 'Leave you to it for a bit, H. Come down when you are feeling better, yeah?''No, hang on, wait a sec, I am feeling better . . .' But he was gone and the door was closed. Bleeder came and stood directly over Harvey and looked down at him.Harvey looked up and attempted a smile. 'You all right?' he asked weakly.'Mmm. Yes, I am actually.''Right. Good.' Shit. 'So, I er . . . heard about your mum.''Yes?''Harsh.''Yes.'Harvey hadn't intended to say 'harsh'. He had been meaning to say something else but the image of Mrs Odd's throat had returned again to his mind. He didn't want to discuss this. There hadn't been a lot of time for cogitation since the previous evening, but Harvey knew that the murderer must have got into the house without breaking and entering. There had certainly been no sign of damage when he arrived. The most obvious suspect for the killer therefore was now standing a little too close to the edge of the bed. Harvey inched away under the covers.'I mean, bad one,' he added. 'You must be in shock and stuff. I'm surprised you came to the party really.''I needed to get out of the house.''Oh right, yeah.' Harvey could understand that. It was that sort of house.'Do the police know anything?' It was a perfectly natural question and there was no reason why he should blush and shift about furtively when he asked it. But he did.'They are seeking a killer.' Bleeder had a sort of faraway voice today with an arch note in it, and Harvey recognised it from their past. Even though he was wearing a suit and tie and his hair looked like it cost more to cut than Harvey had spent on his last holiday, the old Bleeder seemed once more present. 'They are compiling their evidence.'Was 'compiling' the right word? Harvey wasn't sure. 'You sound odd,' he said, and then rushed on, 'Or rather, not odd so much as troubled. You must be troubled. You've a lot to be troubled about really, I suppose. I sometimes wish someone would murder my parents, but of course in truth I'd be very . . . troubled.''Yes. It has come as a shock.' For a moment the new Bleeder, the Charles as Harvey now thought of him, returned. 'It has been quite a shock.' And he sat down on the edge of the bed exactly as Steve had done. Harvey felt very differently about this new arrival in what was, when all was said and done, his personal space. He shifted a little further across the mattress.'I hear you had a fight.''Um, yeah. Bit of one. Not really a fight as such, just a bit of a wrestling match, sort of thing. With Jeff Cooper.''You were kissing his wife.''Well, not kissing as such. Rather sort of . . .''Wrestling?' The new Charles was back and smiling. 'You're obviously a bit of a wrestling fan.''No, not really, I just . . . it's been a funny few days.''Mmm. Yes it has.' Bleeder frowned for a moment. 'I wish to God I hadn't come down here. It's years since I was here and I don't know why I came back.''No . . . God knows why any of us do. I guess one has to come back occasionally, but yeah, I can see how you might have preferred not to be here when this happened.' Harvey looked at him closely, but Bleeder just nodded.'Mmm? Yes. Yes, that's true. I wish I'd stayed in London. There isn't much point in going back . . .' Bleeder seemed to see something in the gold-rimmed mirror on the dressing table that worried him, for he shook his head and turned to face Harvey again.'My mother was not an easy woman,' he said suddenly.Well, of course, that wasn't what the rumours had always said about her, but Harvey didn't mention this. Instead, he simply shook his head and leaned across for the makeshift ashtray. His side spasmed again and he groaned. Bleeder seemed not to hear. 'In many ways we were distant from each other. She had problems, her mind was not right. It took me some time to realise that. And to get away from her, to really leave St Ives. Do you know, I think it took me years really.''And now you're back,' Harvey added helpfully.'Yes. Yes, I'm back. But she's gone.' He paused for a long time. 'I want to know now,' he said suddenly. 'I think now I want to know everything.'Harvey had managed to light another cigarette from the collapsing butt of the first. This one was equally flat and with bits of tobacco falling out of the end. He felt panic rising in him.'You want to know?' he said. 'Want to know what? And anyway, why ask me? What am I to do with anything? I don't know anything.' He was glad Bleeder was not a policeman at this point, because even to his own ear he sounded guilty as hell.'You were there,' said Bleeder simply. 'So you must know.''I was not. I don't know what you mean . . . how do you know I was there? Where were you? That's what I'd like to know: where were you?' Harvey could hear his own voice rising to a pitch of terror unlike anything he'd heard before. He had thought he knew himself, knew his voice, yet here in extremis was a stranger suddenly shouting from inside his head.At that point the door opened and Nurse Jessica returned. 'Feeling any better, are we?' she carolled sweetly. 'Steve said you were awake. He's rung your parents, H. He thought you could do with a lift home. Your dad is coming for you.''Oh right, right, yeah.' Harvey called his voice back to itself, as though calling a ferret from a rabbit hole. Even as he said it, even as he forced the panic down by an act of will, he was able to feel a faint regret that his father was coming. Why couldn't he have been out? He could handle his mother.Bleeder had stood up and was gazing unseeing out of the window.'Let's er . . . you know. We can talk again, Charles.' Harvey hauled himself up and allowed Jessica to help him, even though he could manage really. She smelled of soap and had such gentle hands . . . Bleeder did not reply. 'I guess I'll just . . . you know, downstairs. Better say my goodbyes and you know . . .' Harvey, once upright, moved quickly towards the door and then caught sight of himself in the oval mirror. 'Jesus, look at that.' He studied the beginnings of a black eye. 'I look like a real bruiser.' Trying to control the pride that was replacing the panic, he moved to the door. 'So er, see you then, Charles, yeah?''Yes. Yes, see you, H . . . Harvey. We must have another talk. I'm sure we will . . . talk.''Er, yeah.' Harvey grabbed the doorhandle and ran.'A fight?' Mrs Briscow looked at Harvey with her deepest disapproval. 'You go to a party and you get into a fight?'The alcohol and the bruises from earlier in the afternoon were beginning to take their toll. All Harvey really wanted was to go back to sleep. 'Look, actually it was just a bit of horseplay and I don't think it needs any more discussion.' The eye was coming up nicely and Harvey was examining it in the hallway mirror. He had attempted to tell his father than he had fallen down the stairs but unfortunately Steve had already explained over the phone.'Lying and fighting, I don't know which is worse.'Harvey pulled a face and watched himself pull it. Was that really how he looked when he did that? He did it again a couple of times. Jesus, he looked fifty when he did that.'You should surely be too old for putting us through this, Harvey.' His mother's voice dragged him unhappily away from the mirror.'Oh yes, sorry, Mum. I get punched in the face and kicked in the kidneys but you are the ones that really suffer, aren't you? I mean, Jesus, how inconsiderate of me.''Kicked in the kidneys! I thought you said it was just some horseplay. I should take you down to the doctor's, you might be bleeding inside.''I'm not bleeding inside. I may be crying inside but don't trouble yourselves about that, I wouldn't.''Don't be soft, lad.' His father was now reading the paper. 'If you get into a fight you must accept the consequences, no good blubbing about it afterwards.''Thanks, Dad. What a loss you were to the caring professions.''Your father was an ambulance driver in the army,' his mother reminded him.'Yes I know, Mum, we've met before, if you remember. The point is that I am alive and I suggest we break out the champagne rather than behaving as if I am nine years old and have misbehaved myself. Now, I am going up to my room and I am going to stay there for a long time. I have had a shock and what I need is rest. I do not want to be disturbed. If there are any drills needing to be found, or little chores to be performed outside my door I would ask you both very kindly to delay them until I get out of this lazar house first thing tomorrow. OK?''First thing, is it?' Mr Briscow's eyes shone. 'I'll see you first thing then, son.''Oh shit.' Harvey shook his head and felt the exhaustion more strongly than before.'And no more rubbish under your bed, please.' His mother had returned to the kitchen and was humming happily having delivered this directive. Harvey was halfway up the stairs before it reached his brain. He walked carefully down again.'Sorry?''I found that bag of clothes under your bed, covered in muck. I dread to think what you get up to sometimes. I put the whole lot through the washing machine twice, including your plimsolls. They are as good as new now.''Er, right. OK. Thanks, Mum.' And he crept up to bed at half past eight, exactly as if he was nine years old. It had been a very long day and for once, for once only, it felt good.
Chapter Fourteen
Why do parents like waiting at railway stations? If there is anything to say it can be said in the car, or before leaving the house even. Yet here were Harvey's parents hanging about with him on the Penzance platform in an awkward and unnatural silence waiting for a train that was ten minutes delayed. 'You can go if you want, you know. I'll be all right.' I'm thirty-five, for Christ's sake. But he couldn't say that because he had a rule: never leave under a cloud. You don't want your last face-to-face words to your parents until next Christmas to be unkind ones.'No, we'll stay, darling. We want to see you off. We see you so rarely, we have to take every minute we can.' His mother's sentimentality was kicking in and he thought he could detect actual tears imminent.'Yeah, OK, it's nice to have some company actually.' Not yours, of course, but . . .'You could lose a bit of weight, Harvey.' His father was not, as Harvey had learned to his cost in the past, afflicted by his own concerns around departures. He remembered vividly the day he went off to university, his first real leaving home and his father's last words to him: 'You can't do much worse there than you did at school, can you?' Half his journey had been ruined thinking about it: what kind of valediction was that when the only child leaves home for ever? Shouldn't there be some rite of passage, some passing on of wisdom from father to son, not just a wanton insult? Where was the ceremony? Where was the passion? Jesus.'Piss off.' Rules, after all, are there for the breaking.'Now, Harvey, don't be rude to your father.''He said I was fat.''No he didn't, he said you could lose some weight. That's a different-''He is fat.''Look, will you piss off. You're not exactly the glamorous grandad yourself.''He's not a grandad, Harvey. I'd so love him to be, but he isn't ...''Oh, for fuck's sake, I don't believe you are going to start on that now ...'And so the leave-taking descended into abuse as, in truth, it almost always did, rules or no rules.Harvey had been looking forward to the journey home. His father had roused him at half past six by coughing outside his bedroom door and padding up and down the landing. Harvey, who rarely arose before nine, was feeling the pace a little. The journey, he felt, could be restful. A time for clear and considered thought. He needed to draw a line under everything that had happened. Get some distance, literally and figuratively. Move on. But instead, almost at once, he found himself thinking in circles. And they were circles of guilt. 'I should have gone to the police at once'; 'I should have found out where she was staying and telephoned her'; 'I should have stayed and talked it all through with Bleeder.' This last was the most wretched cycle of all. If he had just had a little courage he might have found out how much Bleeder knew. Instead, he had left himself open to hope and fear in equal measure. For all his efforts on his future self 's behalf he had let him down after all and he felt bad about that. What if I never know? That was one of the fears assailing him. It was perfectly possible that there would be no coverage of a murder in Cornwall in the national press. He would find it hard to ring his parents more than once a week without causing major suspicion in their minds. There was the possibility that he would never hear anything further about the murder of Mrs Odd. And that was a good thing, of course, except that he knew his sleep patterns were going to suffer.The journey from Penzance to London is of nearly six hours' duration and there is a limit to how much of the English countryside any man can take. Harvey had a book in his bag, a biography of a seventies rock star. But somehow groupies and drug binges seemed a bit shallow and unexciting; compared to the last few days at the seaside they sounded like a rest cure. So to stifle the anxiety attacks that were threatening to send him heaving to the tiny train toilet, he drank beer from outrageously overpriced tins of Watneys, warm and sticky, but good for the memory. He started soon after he boarded at ten fifteen and was still sipping from his last can when he arrived at Paddington at four thirty. By that time he had forgotten pretty much everything.Although he had taken very little to the reunion, he still found his rucksack heavy and unwieldy. Stumbling a little and slipping on the polished platform surface, he considered abandoning the bag in a passing luggage trolley. However, with a quick snatch of 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' by the Clash, which happened to be in his mind, he decided instead to keep the bag. It was his after all. People were looking at him, he realised, as he made his way towards the Underground and he smiled benignly. 'Hello,' he called kindly. 'I didn't do it, in case you are wondering. I am entirely innocent. Well, no . . .' he corrected himself, 'not innocent entirely, not guilty or anything. I broke a window, for Christ's sake.' He swung the bag up from his trailing hand onto his shoulder, buffeting an old lady who was following behind him. 'Ha, shouldn't stand so close. '"Don't Stand so Close to Me".' He sang a bar or two of Sting as he turned round again to give her a smile, but she had gone. 'Bye. Shit.' He stumbled again and headed for a bench. 'I must sit down.' He sat for a few moments, aware of two things. One was that he had cured the circling thoughts in his mind, they had definitely disappeared; however, it now seemed that everything else was going round and round. The other was that the station was prettified by a sort of plastic facsimile of a traditional English pub, which opened off to one side of the concourse. Harvey had the idea that he had drunk there before and decided that he should revisit those days. This spirit of nostalgia got him through two further pints before he felt ready to go. 'Cheerio,' he said to a slightly smelly but very friendly man he had met in the pub. 'Have one more on me.' He handed the man a fiver and received an expansive smile.'Ta, gov.'Then smiling in a way intended to take in the rest of the pub's patrons and, in truth, the entire human race, he made his way to the Underground.It was as he was buying a ticket that he became aware that he wanted to go to his shop rather than head for home. He wanted to look at what, if the hard truth was faced, was his only real achievement in life. He wanted to run his hands over it. Feel that he really was back in town. With a brief burst of 'Mack the Knife', he headed for the barriers. Josh had been left in charge for the four days Harvey had been away and Josh was not to be trusted. He was not managerial material. A good manager should check his stock. A good manager put job before home-life. So instead of taking the Bakerloo Line to Charing Cross, Harvey took the Circle Line to Moorgate and walked up Old Street to Inaction Comix through a light drizzle. The shop was in darkness and he took a while getting out his keys. Like most of the shops in the area a metal awning had been sealed shut from top to bottom over the windows and door and Harvey spent a long time trying to get the key into the lock at the bottom of the doorguard before realising that he was using his house keys. Giggling and with a long, ultimately explosive fart, he found the right key. Grunting with satisfaction he opened the padlock and slid the metal up. He had always liked the way the metal grille folded in on itself and tonight he did it twice before unlocking the door, turning a switch and blinking in the painful glare of the strip lights. Carefully he shut the door behind him and looked around.All seemed to be well. No one had stolen the stock or set fire to the cash register. Nor were there any signs of flooding or insect invasion. Giggling again, Harvey found his way past the counter and into the back room. It was not uncommon for him, when drunk, to sleep on the long grubby grey couch that took up most of one wall. He seriously considered his condition now. Was he drunk enough to stay the night? It was always a bit of a toss-up. It meant instant rest, which suddenly seemed terribly compelling, but it also meant waking up cold, fully clothed, on a couch, usually with Josh standing over him looking considerate. Like so much in life there were pros and cons. He picked up the heap of mail that Josh had dumped on his desk, most of it bills, and sat down on the couch. It was very comfortable. No, he didn't want to come and look at a fifteen-year-old boy's comic collection, no, he didn't want a TV licence, no, he didn't need another four credit cards, no, he wasn't the winner of a million-pound prize draw. Josh had done very little to sort the mail, mostly because he knew he wasn't allowed to open it and this rankled. But to prevent it slipping off the desk and onto the floor he had piled it in size order with the larger items at the bottom. This meant that the hard-backed A4brown envelope that provided the foundation for the whole pile was last. Harvey was yawning and feeling really that in fact a lot of decisions just made themselves. He leaned back against the tobacco-scented cushions and tore the end off this last envelope, then with a slight struggle, extracted its contents. After that he sat and looked at what he had got for a long time. It was a mint-condition copy of a Superman One Superman One in a plastic slip protector. And on the front of the plastic protector were a number of red, smudged fingerprints. in a plastic slip protector. And on the front of the plastic protector were a number of red, smudged fingerprints.Harvey held it for minutes that seemed to be sucking at him, as if time was draining the alcohol and the faith out of him. Then he got up and walked unsteadily to his desk. He found the keys on the top and this time got the right one at once. Unlocking the bottom drawer where the petty cash was kept and lifting out the black metal tin inside, Harvey put the Superman One Superman One underneath it and then replaced the tin and closed and locked the drawer. Then he walked backwards to the sofa, unconsciously enacting an exact reversal of his previous movements, and fell heavily onto its untender mercy. He lay for a long moment awake but without thought, without response. Blank. And then he sank, blissfully, into total darkness. underneath it and then replaced the tin and closed and locked the drawer. Then he walked backwards to the sofa, unconsciously enacting an exact reversal of his previous movements, and fell heavily onto its untender mercy. He lay for a long moment awake but without thought, without response. Blank. And then he sank, blissfully, into total darkness.
Chapter Fifteen
'You left the door unlocked . . .' Josh's voice seemed to be coming from the locked drawer at the bottom of Harvey's desk, which unexpectedly was buried under some brambles in Bleeder's garden. '. . . all night with the shutter up.' There was amazement in his tone, mingled with a sort of grudging respect. 'I can't believe you did that.' Harvey untangled himself from his T-shirt, which had become rucked round his neck, pushed off the cushion that was smothering him, shook off the dream that was still circling round his head and sat up. Then he groaned. At everything.'Leave that!' he said suddenly as Josh, attempting to perch on the edge of the desk, moved the pile of opened mail. 'I'll deal with that.' He rubbed his hand over his face to clear the dreams that had invaded the deep, dark wonderful nothingness of his drunken slumber and then, pushing himself up like an old man, ran bow-legged to the toilet. Josh heard what seemed to be a river cascading through the shop. It took a while before the flush went and the sound of taps replaced it. Harvey re-emerged, drying his face on the filthy hand towel that they kept in the equally filthy staff bathroom. 'That's a first even for you,' Josh continued as if Harvey had not left him, 'all night. Anyone could have wandered in and stolen the stock or done you in. How lucky are you?''Lucky?' Harvey emerged for a moment from the towel, his face pink overlaying grey beneath the stubble; his whole head gleaming with droplets. He considered the word for a moment as if examining a rare Japanese Hentai. 'How lucky am I?''Well, you could have been mugged.''Yes. I could.' He made his way back to the sofa and sat down to light a cigarette.'What happened by the way?''Eh?''Your eye. You get in a fight, yeah? Or fell down or something?''Oh yeah, bit of argy-bargy, nothing really.''Right. Bad one.' Josh put on his best bedside manner. 'Want a McBreakfast?''Yeah, OK.' Harvey realised that Josh was right, he did need a McBreakfast.'Big Breakfast?''Yeah.''How many?''Two.''Sure?''Yeah . . . No. Three.''Right. Can I take a fiver from petty cash? I'm a bit boracic?''Yeah, yeah, OK.' Harvey was searching for his matches, which had fallen off the end of the sofa during the night. The difficult bit was getting his hand down to the floor without bending over because bending over made the blood, and more importantly the pain, rush to the front of his head. Josh tinkered for a moment with his keys and then began to pull open the bottom drawer of the desk. His progress was impeded by Harvey who rugby-tackled him from the side and hurled him bodily to the floor.'What in fuck ... ?''Shit. Sorry.' Harvey got up, shut the drawer and then rubbed his shoulder. 'Shit, that hurt.' He looked down to where Josh lay on his back. Somewhat distractedly he reached out to help him up. 'Sorry, just, er, playing.''You nearly broke my bloody back, you fucking idiot.' Josh got up slowly and tested his limbs for damage. 'You could have killed me.''Yeah, sorry.''What the fuck's the matter with you? Just 'cause you get in one fight in Cornwall you start acting all . . . twatish . . .'Twatish? Harvey stifled an inopportune giggle, which started in the pool of hysteria he could feel somewhere down at the bottom of his stomach. 'Sorry, Josh. Look . . .' He felt in his pockets and found a tenner. 'Look, get us both some breakfast, all right? Get yourself some pancakes and syrup, that's your favourite. And a thick shake.' But Josh was not to be mollified. He refused to go at first but then grabbed the money and without a word stalked off, slamming the shop door behind him. As soon as he'd gone Harvey went at once to the bottom drawer. There was just a chance, if he prayed really hard, if he called in all the favours he had ever done a benevolent maker, that it would turn out to have been just a drunken hallucination. That was the best plan he could think of at the moment. He knew it wasn't a good plan and that it had very little chance of success. And sure enough the Superman One Superman One was lying neatly under the moneybox. He took it out and looked hard at it for several minutes. None of his old desire was left. He felt no pleasure in it, no wish to open the packaging, no interest in its contents. It represented nothing but suffering and misery. And mystery. While drunken sleep rarely fulfils the same purpose as good sober rest, it had allowed some things to clarify. What Harvey now felt for certain as he had only vaguely guessed before was that he was being set up. Somehow, someone was trying to get at him. He felt the rising panic, the anxiety attack coming, he felt his head throbbing, his mouth felt like a sawdust floor and he could taste vomit somewhere in the background of his palate. As he held the bloodstained comic in his hands he realised something more: whoever it was was succeeding. Never in his life had he felt as got-at as he did right now. What was he to do with the evidence? He had read Edgar Allan Poe but had always considered him a fool. Hiding something in plain view was all right in novels but if he left a real was lying neatly under the moneybox. He took it out and looked hard at it for several minutes. None of his old desire was left. He felt no pleasure in it, no wish to open the packaging, no interest in its contents. It represented nothing but suffering and misery. And mystery. While drunken sleep rarely fulfils the same purpose as good sober rest, it had allowed some things to clarify. What Harvey now felt for certain as he had only vaguely guessed before was that he was being set up. Somehow, someone was trying to get at him. He felt the rising panic, the anxiety attack coming, he felt his head throbbing, his mouth felt like a sawdust floor and he could taste vomit somewhere in the background of his palate. As he held the bloodstained comic in his hands he realised something more: whoever it was was succeeding. Never in his life had he felt as got-at as he did right now. What was he to do with the evidence? He had read Edgar Allan Poe but had always considered him a fool. Hiding something in plain view was all right in novels but if he left a real Superman One Superman One on the mantelpiece Josh would wet his pants. He might perhaps have burned it, although if Josh came back to find him setting fire to priceless comics at ten-thirty in the morning that might be the end. Harvey wasn't sure that the end hadn't come anyway because when Josh did return he refused to speak and took his pancakes and syrup off to the counter where he sat making disgusting slurping sounds. Having returned the on the mantelpiece Josh would wet his pants. He might perhaps have burned it, although if Josh came back to find him setting fire to priceless comics at ten-thirty in the morning that might be the end. Harvey wasn't sure that the end hadn't come anyway because when Josh did return he refused to speak and took his pancakes and syrup off to the counter where he sat making disgusting slurping sounds. Having returned the Superman One Superman One to the petty-cash drawer, Harvey went and fetched his three Big Breakfasts without complaint from the counter where they had been dumped. In truth, the silent treatment was just what he needed. to the petty-cash drawer, Harvey went and fetched his three Big Breakfasts without complaint from the counter where they had been dumped. In truth, the silent treatment was just what he needed.In his mind he ran over the facts. People knew that he wanted the Superman One Superman One. He had told his story many times. His old school friends knew. Josh knew. It seemed for a moment as though everyone must know. Except his parents, of course. He never told them anything. And people told other people: for a while part of Harvey's resentment about the Superman One Superman One was that it had become the most interesting thing about him. When people talked about him they would often mention it. Indeed, in his darker moments, he had imagined being referred to as 'that bore who lost the comic' or 'that weird guy who could have been rich . . . remember him?' So other people at the reunion must have known how significant his meeting with Bleeder really was. Not many people had mentioned it, of course. But that was because people were like that. They were polite or they were discreet, or most often of all in his experience, they weren't really interested enough to bother. Of course, one of those someone elses might have been rather more interested than he knew. Just because he had dreamed of the was that it had become the most interesting thing about him. When people talked about him they would often mention it. Indeed, in his darker moments, he had imagined being referred to as 'that bore who lost the comic' or 'that weird guy who could have been rich . . . remember him?' So other people at the reunion must have known how significant his meeting with Bleeder really was. Not many people had mentioned it, of course. But that was because people were like that. They were polite or they were discreet, or most often of all in his experience, they weren't really interested enough to bother. Of course, one of those someone elses might have been rather more interested than he knew. Just because he had dreamed of the Superman One Superman One for so many years didn't mean that he had some special claim on it. Anyone who fancied two hundred grand might have popped round to Bleeder's house to try their luck. Harvey pictured the scene . . . for some reason Jeff Cooper was cast in the role of burglar. Mrs Odd comes in from her shopping trip just as Jeff is getting the comic out of the box in the basement. Mrs Odd hears a noise, she creeps along the hallway to the cellar door ('Don't do it, Mrs Odd'), she peeps inside but of course you can't see into the cellar from the top step, so she moves silently down step by step ('Go back, Mrs Odd') but she goes on, down and down; Jeff has a knife from the kitchen for opening the box, it is a big carving knife with a red plastic handle. He snatches it up as he hears a creak from the stairs ('Don't do it, Jeff '); she runs at him, trying to stop him; they wrestle; he turns her round and cuts her throat ('Oh my God, what have I done?'). Then in a panic he runs out of the house, dropping the knife, or maybe washing it first . . . and he must be really bloody too . . . Well, anyway, he runs out but then realises that in his fright he has left the comic behind. He returns, planning to collect it, but as he is about to enter he sees Harvey Briscow, his old enemy and sexual rival, fucking about in the garden. He hatches a cruel, nay wicked, plan. He waits somewhere outside in a bush or whatever then when he sees Harvey run panic-stricken out of the house having left lots of incriminating fingerprints, he sneaks back in and steals the for so many years didn't mean that he had some special claim on it. Anyone who fancied two hundred grand might have popped round to Bleeder's house to try their luck. Harvey pictured the scene . . . for some reason Jeff Cooper was cast in the role of burglar. Mrs Odd comes in from her shopping trip just as Jeff is getting the comic out of the box in the basement. Mrs Odd hears a noise, she creeps along the hallway to the cellar door ('Don't do it, Mrs Odd'), she peeps inside but of course you can't see into the cellar from the top step, so she moves silently down step by step ('Go back, Mrs Odd') but she goes on, down and down; Jeff has a knife from the kitchen for opening the box, it is a big carving knife with a red plastic handle. He snatches it up as he hears a creak from the stairs ('Don't do it, Jeff '); she runs at him, trying to stop him; they wrestle; he turns her round and cuts her throat ('Oh my God, what have I done?'). Then in a panic he runs out of the house, dropping the knife, or maybe washing it first . . . and he must be really bloody too . . . Well, anyway, he runs out but then realises that in his fright he has left the comic behind. He returns, planning to collect it, but as he is about to enter he sees Harvey Briscow, his old enemy and sexual rival, fucking about in the garden. He hatches a cruel, nay wicked, plan. He waits somewhere outside in a bush or whatever then when he sees Harvey run panic-stricken out of the house having left lots of incriminating fingerprints, he sneaks back in and steals the Superman One Superman One, little knowing that Harvey will also return and helpfully clean up all the evidence for him. Perfect. Fiendishly simple. Harvey nodded with great confidence. Jeff did it. But then he spoke aloud: 'So why the fuck did he send me this?'Well, it sort of almost made sense. Harvey was reunited with the sofa. He rolled flat on it again and lay in his favourite position, on his back, blowing smoke up in neat streams towards the ceiling. The problem with being in the comic business was that it made you a narrative idealist. Comics, unlike the modern novel or the post-modern artwork, had a linear and complete logic. However complex the plot, in the end the good guys won and the bad guys got caught, usually by the good guys, often with the good guys wearing muscle-defining body suits and cool capes and masks. You can't be exposed to that sort of storyline too many times without starting to expect some sort of logical outcomes and neat resolutions involving capes at the very least in your own life. So it was that Harvey's daydream, up till now sensible and well reasoned, did not end at that point. Instead, a whole story developed from it in which Harvey returned to Cornwall, followed the trail of clues to their obvious denouement, captured Jeff, gave him two black eyes, handed him over to the local police and got off with his wife. This last section went on for a very long time and Harvey was at the point of rolling over onto his stomach when Josh came in.'Phone,' he said and went out again.Harvey struggled with his erection for a moment and then managed to stand upright. Had he slept again? He looked at his watch and found that it was ten past twelve. Jesus, it was lunchtime. He discovered that he still had some bits of Macpattie in his teeth and when he put his hand to his head in his hair. He was picking at these as he made his way through into the shop.'Thanks, Josh,' he said pointedly but got no response.Harvey picked up. 'Hello?''Harvey? It's Maisie Cooper.' And his heart did a twist.'Hi, Maisie,' he said, and he said it in tones of such honeyed sweetness that his erection reasserted itself, presumably assuming that sex must be on the cards. Josh also gave him a grudging glance of interest. Harvey hadn't had women ringing him for a while and Josh loved gossip. Wait until he hears she's married to my old school friend and that he gave me the black eye, Harvey thought. If that doesn't make things up between us nothing will. He turned his attention to the phone.