In a Dry Season (35 page)

Blackstone chuckled. “Okay. Talk to you later.”

Billy Joe and Gloria soon became a couple. Billy Joe was seen going alone to Bridge Cottage, and that got the village tongues wagging. Especially when
PX
was seen coming and going there the next day. He, too, seemed to have taken a shy sort of shine to Gloria, happy to be her slave and get for her whatever her heart desired. I suggested Gloria tell them to use the back door, where they couldn't be seen from High Street, but she just laughed and shrugged it off.

There was no real mystery to the visits. Gloria told me she wanted sex and she had chosen Billy Joe to supply it. She said he was good at it. I still didn't understand what it was all about. When I asked her if I had to be in love before I let men take liberties with me, she lapsed into one her mysterious silences, then said, “There's love, Gwen, and then there's sex. They don't have to be the same. Especially not these days. Not while there's a war on. Just try not to get them mixed up.” Then she smiled. “But it's always nice to be a little bit in love.” After this, I was more confused than ever, but I let the subject drop.

Gloria also needed her Luckies, nylons, lipstick, rouge and scented soap. She drank too much, so needed a source for whisky, too, and she also took to chewing gum, which she insisted on chewing in church, just to annoy Betty Goodall. And
PX
, of course, would get her all these things at the flutter of an eyelash. Whether she ever granted him any favours in exchange, I can't say for certain, but I doubt it. Whatever she was, Gloria was never a whore, and I couldn't imagine
PX
actually being with a woman in that way. He looked even younger and seemed even shyer and more awkward than me. There was some health reason that prevented him from serving in a more active branch of the forces—after all, he looked young and strong enough for combat—but he never told anyone exactly what it was.

PX
did little favours for us all—for me, Cynthia, Alice, even Mother—especially when it came to nylons and make-up. One thing I soon started to wonder about was why the American forces, undoubtedly male as they were for the most part, had storage-rooms full of women's underwear and cosmetics. It was either intended to endear them to the local women, or they had certain private proclivities that they managed to hide from the rest of the world.

Anyway, lucky for us,
PX
>
seemed willing and able to get hold of just about anything we needed. If we bemoaned the lack of decent meat, for example, he would produce bacon and on occasion, even a piece of beef. Once he even, miracle of miracles, came up with some oranges! I hadn't seen an orange in years.

I don't think his empire was limited to the contents of the Rowan Woods
PX
, either. Sometimes, when he got a weekend pass, he would disappear mysteriously for the entire time. He never said where he went or why, but I suspected he had a few dealings with the Leeds black market. I think I rather liked him, even though he seemed so young, and I
might
have gone out with him if he had asked me. But he never did, and I was too shy to ask him. We were only together in a group. Besides, I know he preferred Gloria.

Billy Joe had other uses, too. He was essentially an aeroplane mechanic, but he could also fix anything on wheels. That came in useful when our little Morris van gave up the ghost. Billy Joe came down in the evening, with
PX
and a couple of others tagging along, fixed it in a jiffy, then the whole gang of us picked up Gloria and went to the Shoulder of Mutton for a drink. A curious incident occurred that night that coloured my view of Billy Joe for some time to come.

They were the only Americans in the pub and we were the only women. In addition to getting us plenty of suspicious and disapproving glances, even from people I had known for years and served in the shop, this also drew a few loud and pointed comments. Most of the men there were either too old to go to war or were excused because of health reasons. Some were in reserved occupations.

“Just think about it, Bert,” said one local as we bought our first drinks. “Our lads are over there fighting the Nazis, and them damn Yanks are over here sniffing around our women like tomcats in heat.”

We ignored them, took a table in a quiet corner and kept to ourselves.

The next time we were ready for drinks, Billy Joe went to the bar. He was drinking pints of watery beer, and I had told him to hold onto his glass because there was a shortage. A lot of locals took their own, and some even used jamjars, but if you got one early in the evening you had to hold onto it for the night.

As he was on his way back, one of the local strapping farm lads who hadn't been called up—something to do with an allergy to tinned food, I think—called out after him:

“Hey, Yank. Tha's ta'en me glass.”

Billy Joe tried to ignore him, but the man, Seth his name was, had drunk enough to make him feel brave. He lumbered over from the bar and stood right behind Billy Joe back at the table. The place went quiet.

“I said that's
my
glass tha's got tha beer in, Yank.”

Billy Joe put the tray down on the table, glanced at the pint glass and shrugged. “Same one I've had all evening, sir,” he said in that lazy Southern drawl.

“Same one I've had all evening, sir.” Seth tried to mock him, but it didn't come out right. “Well it's mine, sithee.”

Billy Joe picked up his glass of beer, turned to face Seth slowly and shook his head. “I don't think so, sir.”

Seth thrust his chin forward. “Well, I bloody do. Gimme it back.”

“You sure, sir?”

“Aye, Yank.”

Billy Joe nodded in that slow way of his, then he poured the beer all over Seth's feet and held out the glass to him. “You can take the glass,” he said. “But the beer was mine. I paid for it. And, by the way, sir, ah am not a Yankee.”

Even Seth's friends had started to laugh by now. It was that sort of fulcrum moment, when so much hangs in the balance, just the lightest touch the wrong way sends it all tumbling down. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast.

Seth made the wrong move. He stepped back and raised his fist. But he was slow. Billy Joe might have had that exaggerated sort of lazy grace, but his speed amazed me. Before anyone knew what had happened, there was the sound of breaking glass and Seth was on his knees, screaming, hands over his face, blood gushing out between his fingers.

“Ah am not a Yankee, sir,” Billy Joe repeated, then turned his back and sat down. The mood had soured, nobody wanted anything more to drink, and we all left shortly afterwards.

Vivian Elmsley got up at about one o'clock, turned on the bedside light and took a sleeping pill. She didn't like them, didn't like the way they made her feel woolly-minded the next morning, but this was getting ridiculous. They said old people didn't need as much sleep, but lying tossing and turning all night imagining someone scratching at the window or tapping at the door was exhausting. It was probably the wind, she told herself as she turned off the light and settled back on the pillows.

But there was no wind.

Slowly, the chemical Morpheus insinuated its way into her system. She felt sluggish, her blood heavy as lead, pushing her down into the mattress. Soon she hovered on the threshold between sleep and waking, where thoughts take on the aspect of dreams, and an image you conjure up consciously is suddenly snatched away for unconscious improvisations, like variations on a musical theme.

At first, she pictured Gloria's tilted head as she had appeared on the
TV
screen, the detail from Stanhope's painting, looking like a cartoon-Gloria.

Then the cartoon-Gloria started talking about a night in Rio de Janeiro when Vivian had had too much to drink and—the only time—succumbed to sexual advances at a cocktail party in a big hotel, remembered a whispered room number, waited until Ronald was fast asleep and
slipped out into the corridor.

The cartoon-Gloria's monologue was cut with images of the night, which flicked past jerkily like the series of cards in an old “What the Butler Saw” machine.

Vivian had always wondered what it would be like. They only did it once. Her lover was a gentle and sensitive woman from the French embassy, conscious it was Vivian's first time, but ultimately frustrated at her lack of ability to respond. It wasn't for want of trying, Vivian thought. She couldn't lose herself in sex with a man, so she had hoped she could abandon herself to the caresses of another woman, enjoy the bliss that writers wrote about and people risked everything for.

But she couldn't. It wouldn't happen.

Finally, she put on her robe and hurried out, humiliated, back to her own room. Ronald was still snoring away. She lay on her own bed and stared at the dark ceiling, tears welling in her eyes, a dull ache in her loins.

As the cartoon-Gloria retold the story of Vivian's failed attempt at sex and infidelity, it was as if the
TV
camera started to move away from her, and the rest of Gloria came into view, showing more of her figure, and before long Vivian realized that Gloria wasn't wearing a red dress; she was covered in blood which oozed from cuts deep into the gristle of her flesh.

Yet she was still talking.

Talking about something that happened years after her death.

Vivian tried to stop it, but she felt as if she were being held down by the weight of her own blood, an anchor hooked deep into the darkness and the horror. Too heavy.

She struggled to wake, and as she did, the telephone
rang. Her bonds were suddenly cut, and she shot up, gasping for air as if she had been drowning.

Without thinking, she picked up the receiver. A life-line.

After a short pause, the monotone voice whispered, “Gwen. Gwen Shackleton.”

“Go away,” she mumbled, her tongue thick and furred.

The voice laughed. “Soon, Gwen,” he said. “Soon.”

Eleven

B
anks and Annie drove out to the estate from Millgarth Police
HQ.
When Annie asked Banks why he always wanted to do the driving himself, he didn't really know the answer. Being driven was one of the perks of his rank that he had never really capitalized on. Partly, he would always rather use his own car than sign one out because he didn't want to have to put up with other coppers' tab-ends in the ashtrays, chocolate wrappers, used tissues and God knows what else all over the floor, not to mention the lingering germs and odours. Mostly, though, he needed to be in control, with
his
feet on the pedals,
his
hands on the steering-wheel.

He also liked to control the music. It had always angered Sandra, the way he put on whatever
CD
he
wanted to listen to, or turned on the television to a programme
he
wanted to watch. She claimed he was selfish. He said he always knew what he wanted to listen to or watch and she didn't; besides, why should he listen to music or watch films he didn't like? Another stand-off.

Banks parked in front of a strip of shops set back from the main road near Bramley Town End, and he and Annie strolled down the hill towards the street where Gwen and Matthew Shackleton had lived. Both were dressed casually;
neither looked like a police officer. Sometimes, feelings against all forms of authority ran high on these estates. People spotted strangers quickly enough as it was, and they were naturally suspicious of anyone in a suit. Which was hardly surprising: on an estate like this, if you saw someone you knew wearing a suit, you assumed he had a court appearance coming up; and if you saw a stranger wearing one, it was either the cops or the social.

Banks had grown up on a similar estate in Peterborough. More modern than this one, but basically the same mix of grim and grimy terrace houses alongside the newer redbrick maisonettes and tower blocks, all covered in graffiti. When he was a kid, the street was cobbled, and they would have bonfires there every Guy Fawkes Night. The whole estate would come out and share their fireworks and food. Potatoes baked in foil at the edges of the fire, and people passed around trays of home-made parkin and treacle toffee. Neighbours would seize the opportunity to chuck their old furniture on the fire—a practice Banks's mother said she thought was showing off. If Mrs Green at number sixteen threw her battered armchair on the bonfire, it was tantamount to telling everyone she could afford a new one.