After Bathing at Baxters (24 page)

At midnight the phone rang again. Cowering in pyjamas under the haggard glare of the hall light, Dorfman listened to Ascension imparting details of an evening flight two days away. ‘It will be OK no, you and me?' she suggested, and Dorfman nodded his head, enveloped suddenly in wide, aquamarine spaces where Stuka dive bombers chased and zapped him, and from his bunker on the hillside AirReichs-marshall Goering sent squadrons of Messerschmidt 109s to blow his ass away. ‘Are you OK, darling?' Ascension wondered, ‘I worry maybe you hang up on me, no?' ‘Sure I'm OK,' Dorfman breathed. ‘Fuckin' A.' The silence of the night throbbed around him. Back upstairs he found Francine had switched on the light and was flapping abstractedly through a book called
Dead Meat: Animals are our Buddies too
. ‘Who was that, hon?' ‘Oh, turdbird Guyland from the office about some resecheduled meeting is all,' Dorfman lied. Seeing the droop in Francine's lip he smiled inadequately. ‘You OK?' Francine shrugged. ‘I just thought it might be Alicia. Only Errol was due back from the realtors' convention in Chicago, and she said she didn't know if she could keep her hands off the cleaver.' Dorfman settled himself unhappily back between the covers. ‘Yeah, well some people overreact.'

Forty-two hours later Dorfman stowed the convertible in the airport parking lot, remembering the things he had failed to do. Like telling Francine where he was going (and at present a brief letter left on the kitchen table represented the sum total of his disclosures). Like telling the office. Like even making arrangements for the fucking car. The stub of his airline ticket protruding from the top left-hand pocket of his shirt and a tightly packed handgrip (sneakers, pants, a couple of Hawaiian shirts – it was supposed to be hot out there, OK?) provided no sort of reassurance at all. What was he going to do about the fucking car? As the drome's front porch loomed towards him he veered off forlornly towards a pay phone in the alcove at the side, praying he'd get the ansaphone. He got the ansaphone. After what seemed like a lifetime, Francine's voice began on the message, a message about regrets, absences, speaking after the tone and replying at earliest convenience. While it played, Dorfman wondered what he was going to say. In the end he simply bellowed: ‘The car's at the fuckin' airport, OK?', slammed down the receiver and lit out through the airport's high, welcoming doors. He clock at the entrance to the shopping mall said 8.03. The flight left at 10.15. He'd promised to meet Ascension in the hostess's lounge at 8.30. In two hours' time, Dorfman realised, he'd be strapped into his seat while the girls recited safety routines and the control tower lights winked in the middle distance. He'd once asked Ascension timorously: ‘What do you do if somebody freaks?' ‘Freaks?' ‘In mid-air, I mean. If someone can't handle it.' Ascension had rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, drink, pills. One time, you know, we had a guy shook so much that the co-pilot have to come and hold him down in his seat.' Dorfman figured that the half-dozen or so Jack Daniels he reckoned on downing before take-off plus a vial of Quaaludes he had in his valise would see him through. But what would it be like at the other end? He'd tried getting Ascension to dilate on social life in the Philippines, only to be rewarded with a series of first grade geography primer out-takes: ‘There are many poor people in my country'; ‘There are many unhappy people in my country'; ‘Many people in my country not like Americans'. That last revelation in particular, was just dandy news. It was 8.06, Anxiously Dorfman started prowling the malls, nodded to the security Joes, bought a cappuccino at the coffee diner and drank it looking in the window of a record and tape store. For a moment Mr Kopechnie's face floated up into his mind, and he hoped the old guy would be OK, what with Spence back home in the trailer park and waiting to collect. In the distance, beyond wide-frame windows, the sky was darkening. Dorfman watched it with pained, palpitating unease, his guts dissolving into a stew of uncertainty and fear.

In the hostess's lounge, cool grey light skimmed over the chrome surfaces of the bar; there was no one around. Dorfman had a curious sensation of time stopping, of existence splayed our before him, subject to none of its usual frets and prompts, inert and malleable. He breathed deeply to steady himself, laid his fists on the bar and regarded the plump knuckles with startled detachment. Straightening up from behind his cash machine, the barman said: ‘You Dorfman?' Dorfman nodded expeaantly. The barman flicked a thin white envelope across the bar. ‘This one's for you then.' Dorfman ferried the letter over to a side table and read it in the soft aquarium shadow. In it Ascension told him that he was a liar, that she never should have believed him, that she was ashamed (of both him and herself) and that she had taken an earlier flight to Manila. There was no mention of the two thousand dollars Dorfman had presented her with two days before.
And yet though you are such a bad man I hope you will have a happy life
, the letter signed off. ‘Bad news, huh?' the batman diffidently suggested. ‘Got it in one,' Dorfman agreed. ‘Fuckin' ball breakers, those hostesses,' the barman deposed. There was an odd, complicit gleam in his eye. In answer, Dorfman moved purposefully towards the bar. ‘I want to get drunk,' he said.

Arriving home at 2 a.m. he found Francine sprawled in a deliquescent state at the foot of the staircase, together with a half-empty bottle of vodka and a paperback entitled
Channelling Your Rage
. In the incoherent and accusatory conversation that followed, Dorfman learned that he had Mrs Fogelberg to thank for the unravelling of his plans, an eagle-eyed Mrs Fogelberg who had encouraged confidences from the tearful ornament of her aromatherapy class. ‘And the worst thing,' Francine had said, ‘the worst thing was the lie. Telling her you were some big-shot with a farm in the corn country. In any case, what kind of retard would believe that stuff?' ‘You wouldn't understand,' Dorfman proposed. ‘Oh Kent, baby,' Francine had cried, ‘don't leave me.' ‘Who said anything about leaving for Chrissakes?' Dorfman demanded. In the distance he could hear the rumble of music:
chunka-chunka-chunka, badaway-badaway-badaway, linka-slinka-trinka
. Dragging into the workshop a minute later, he flicked the light on and sat down heavily in a chair, edging out his foot so that it rested on a jar of linseed oil that Francine had brought back from New Mexico all those years ago. On impulse Dorfman picked up the jar and threw it on the floor. As the glass smashed, he heard the sound of Franchie coming to investigate. Prompted by some fierce, ungovernable whim Dorfman seized the Blenheim and brought one fist down viciously on the fuselage, watching the plastic shiver and break between his fingers, the tiny figures go skittering out from beneath the shattered cockpit. ‘Oh hon!' Francine wailed from the door, and Dorfman stopped and stared at her, thinking of the plane tacking away, out across the silent ocean, deep into the welcoming night.

Essex Dogs

They came over the hill as the dawn rose up from under the horizon, and the light turned the colour of orangeade – hard, heavy light mixed with the sodium glare of the streetlamps.

‘This is going to be a good day,' Hennessy said, his high voice squeaking over the noise of the engine. ‘One of the best.'

It was half-past six, quarter to seven maybe. The new watch Maxine had given him for Christmas never kept proper time, Kennedy acknowledged. Out of the window he watched Scudding early traffic move past the road signs to Grays and Thurrock, Canvey Island. Beneath them, further down the hill, deep in mist, the Essex villages slept.

‘Going to be a great day,' Hennessy said again, as if he badly wanted to believe it. ‘You'll see what I'm saying.'

A bit later a rattle from the back of the truck told Kennedy that he'd forgotten to fasten the tools down the night before. Hennessy pulled into a layby and he walked round to the tailgate, lifted it up, and tied the forks and shovels together with a piece of rope he found there. Standing by the wheels, pulling the tail-gate down again, he could see Hennessy through the rear window smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper they'd had in the cab since last week.

It was still cold. Back in the cab Hennessy had switched the heater on and the windscreen was starting to steam up. Kennedy wiped it cautiously with the back of his hand; the smoke from Hennessy's cigarette crept into the corners of his eyes and made them water. He wondered if Hennessy was cross about the tools. Hennessy was like that sometimes about small things. A trail of sugar, say, pitting the brown surface of his coffee, and he'd push the cup away. Maxine said it was stupid, Hennessy being
fastidious
like that. He remembered her saying the word, then pushed the thought away.

As Hennessy bent over the wheel and edged the truck slowly out onto the road again – there were coaches now, and the early traffic heading for London – another thought, not really considered since the afternoon before, rose in his head again.

‘Maguire is it? Today I mean?'

Hennessy didn't turn his head. ‘The very same,' he said.

It was eight o'clock by the time they got to Shoeburyness. By now the heavy lorries had gone, and the car park outside the cafe was empty. Inside he watched Hennessy craning over the counter, staring shortsightedly at the dirty menu, big and untidy in his teddy bear coat with the lining coming away down one side. Kennedy assumed that he'd cheered up. They ate bacon sandwiches and drank tea out of mugs while a radio played at the next table. Kennedy read a Southend United fixture card that hung on the wall and a clump of pinned advertisement cards:
Greyhound, 3 yrs, fast, pedigree, £180 ono; Great Dane puppy's £50; Fridges, white goods, top prices paid
.

‘You still seeing that Maxine?' Hennessy asked carelessly as the radio played ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay'. Kennedy thought about this for a moment, wondering why Hennessy was so interested. Hennessy's life was a mystery. In fact Kennedy hardly knew where he lived. When they met it was always in pubs, Hennessy looking up from his pint and waving, fixed in the halo of smoke. In the end he shrugged, in that offhand way you could interpret how you liked.

‘Ah well …' Hennessy said. Kennedy had seen him talking to women sometimes: he looked a bit smarter then, and he used his hands more.

Maguire was late, much later than he'd ever been.

Hennessy tried calling him twice on the mobile, but there was no answer. ‘Probably at the yard,' Hennessy said vaguely. When he arrived it was nine-thirty and they were clearing the plates away, and a man with a broom was trying to sweep up the cigarette ash that Hennessy had dropped on the floor near his chair. Kennedy tried not to look self-conscious as Maguire walked down the path between the tables. Instead he watched Maguire's tan work-boots clearing a passage through the dust.

‘What'll you take then?' Hennessy asked.

Maguire looked around the cafe, not exactly furtively but with a kind of low-level watchfulness.

‘I'll have a glass of milk.'

Hennessy couldn't believe this. ‘Are you serious?'

‘A glass of milk,' Maguire said to the waitress, without looking at Hennessy again. He sat down in the chair next to Kennedy. ‘What's cooking then boys?'

Kennedy looked at some more advertisement cards: secondhand prams, rock groups who needed bass guitarists, minicab firms wanting drivers. He left Hennessy to do the talking. The milk came and Maguire drank three-quarters of it at a swallow and then stared at the rest. Kennedy was never certain whether he liked Hennessy or not, but he knew he didn't like Maguire. Maxine had met Maguire once, one evening when she'd been able to get a babysitter and they'd gone out. She said he gave her the creeps.

‘So,' he heard Hennessy asking, ‘where is it today then?'

‘Saffron Waiden,' Maguire said. ‘You'll know it when you see it. Big place on the outskirts. Lots of ground, too. Five thousand square feet if it's an inch.'

Hennessy looked thoughtful. Kennedy knew that at times like this he tried to impress Maguire. Sure enough, he said: ‘No worries, Mac. We'll take care of it.'

‘Of course you'll take care of it,' Maguire said. ‘Four o'clock mind. Phone if there's a problem.' Back in the truck, Hennessy wanted to talk about Maguire. ‘Funny guy isn't he?' he said. ‘Jesus, a right funny one. You know he drinks milk in pubs even? That's right. Seen him ask for it and no one bats an eye.' They moved on into the sun, towards a line of container trucks heading for Tilbury. There were gulls crowding in the wind over above the telephone wires: Kennedy watched another gust gather them up and disperse them into the bright air. I mean, I like the guy; Hennessy was saying, ‘but I wouldn't want to
socialise
with him if you know what I mean.'

Past Chelmsford they turned north towards the retirement villages: rolling drives glimpsed between pillared entranceways, sleek lawns within high walls. Hennessy drove purposefully, as if he really had a destination. ‘Always look as if you know what you're doing,' he'd once said to Kennedy, ‘as if you had a
right
.' Near Great Dunmow they found what they were looking for: set back from the road, half an acre of lawn, a carless drive. Hennessy drove the truck noisily up to the front door and reversed it into the gravel. They climbed out and examined the silence for flaws – a dog, say, at the back of the house, a lawn-mower a quarter of a mile away.

‘Deserted,' Hennessy said. ‘Can't ever be sure though.'

Five minutes later, after Hennessy had squinted through the letter box and seen a week's post piled up on the mat, they got to work. Kennedy took the bigger of the two spades and marked out the grass in metre-width squares, Hennessy levered the turves out of the ground with his big turfknife, and they manhandled them onto the back of the truck. ‘Six inches at least,' Hennessy told him when they'd done the first dozen or so, and Kennedy put his full weight on the spade so that only the handle stuck out of the ground. It was amazing how quickly you could dig out a lawn he thought. In twenty minutes a space the size of a cricket pitch had gone; in half an hour Hennessy reckoned they were three-quarters done. ‘No need to rush,' he said. ‘Jesus, they're not coming back are they?' Kennedy shrugged. In all the months of doing this they'd never worked out what would happen if anyone came back.