After Bathing at Baxters (25 page)

There was soft rain coming in now, blowing over from Harwich and the Hook. They stood by the truck smoking cigarettes and brushing away the clods of earth. Kennedy thought again about Maxine and what she'd said the last time they'd met, sitting in the front room at her house with the baby playing on the carpet.
You are unreliable. And you hang around with Hennessy and Maguire
. Actually she hadn't said that but Kennedy could read her thoughts. He looked at the watch again and found it had stopped at 10.15.

There were some children's toys lying at the edge of the gravel drive: a miniature tricycle, two or three wooden bricks, a plastic sword. Kennedy prodded them carefully to one side with his foot. He wondered what it was like to have children, taking them to the park and things like that. He tried to remember his own parents taking him to a park, but lost the image somewhere: perhaps his parents hadn't been the kind of people who took their children to the park. Hennessy flicked his cigarette onto the gravel and said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Here comes trouble.'

Kennedy's eyes were confused by the rain and the angle of the ground: it took a minute for him to work out that the flapping, mackintoshed figure labouring across the field towards them was an elderly woman. When he saw this, his shoulders relaxed. You never had any trouble with old women. All they wanted was an explanation. You could just say politely
Sorry love, we're nicking this stuff
, and they'd nod and go away. ‘Leave this to me,' Hennessy was saying as the woman approached.

Smashed red veins under a Sou'wester hat. That odd, vague look they had. They straightened up to hear what she said, trying to look authoritative, legal.

‘I was just looking out of my window, and I thought … Really had to ask what was going on …'

‘Quite all right, madam,' Hennessy said. ‘No cause to be alarmed. From the council.'

‘But … Mr Frobisher on holiday too …
Sure
he would have said …'

‘That's right, madam.' Hennessy had her by the arm now, Kennedy noticed, polite but firm. ‘Very short notice. No way you could have known.'

‘Oh well …' She hovered round them for a bit, looked on in a puzzled way from the corner of the drive. Kennedy smiled at her reassuringly once or twice. They watched her progress back across the wet grass with silent unease.

‘Interfering old bitch!' Hennessy suddenly shouted. He was really angry, Kennedy could see. ‘Mr Bloody Frobisher! Let's get out of here.'

Luckily they had most of the turf on the truck. Bending down to pick up the last strip Hennessy lost his temper and kicked out savagely at the toy tricycle, which lifted a yard or so in the air and snapped in two as it hit the ground. Turning into the road they saw the old woman standing by the gate watching them. ‘Up yours!' Hennessy shouted defiantly as they whipped past.

The dusk was coming up now, rolling in over the low, sodden fields. It was too late to get to Saffron Waiden, Hennessy said. In the distance, firefly lights from the motorway winked through the shadows. Kennedy wondered about asking if they could stop at a call box so that he could phone Maxine, then thought better of it. ‘You should have seen the look on that old bitch's face when I shouted at her,' Hennessy said, his red hands gripping the wheel. ‘What did I tell you?' He was in a better mood now, honking his horn at the oncoming traffic. ‘Listen,' he said, ‘this is what we do, right. First the pub. Then go find Maguire. Get some sleep and then tomorrow we'll head over to Saffron Waiden and deliver. What do you say?' For a moment Kennedy thought about Maxine. Maguire's stiff face looming up through the grey light of the pub. Then he saw Hennessy's boot hitting the tricycle again, and the fractured, descending arc, saw, too, the child's disbelieving face as he found it. ‘No,' he said, shaking his head. ‘Not tomorrow.'

Acknowledgements

Many of these stories originally appeared elsewhere, and I should like to thank the various editors involved for permission to reproduce them. ‘Dreams of Leaving' first appeared in
P.E.N. New Fiction I
(1984). ‘After Bathing at Baxter's' was first published in
P.E.N. New Fiction II
(1987). ‘At Brackus's' appeared in the
London Magazine
, in
Best Short Stories 1990
and was broadcast on Radio 4. ‘La Grange' was published in
Signals
(1991) and broadcast on Radio 4. ‘Disturbance at the Heron House' appeared in the
London Magazine
and was broadcast on Radio 4. ‘Seeing London' was broadcast on Radio 3 and appeared in
Telling Stories One
(1992). ‘Final Payments' was broadcast on Radio 4 and appeared in
Telling Stories Four
(1995). ‘Summer People' was broadcast on Radio 4 and appeared in
The Oldie
. ‘Fantasy Finals' appeared in
Perfect Pitch
. ‘Taking an Interest' was first published in
The Oldie
.

‘Cuts', ‘Saturday Night at the Jenks Motel', ‘McKechnie's Diner, 9 A.M.', ‘Looking for Lewis and Clark' and ‘Essex Dogs' were originally broadcast on Radio 4.

I should like to acknowledge the help and encouragement of the many people who accepted or commissioned these stories, in particular Peter Ackroyd, Giles Gordon, David Hughes, Richard Ingrams, Simon Kuper, Allan Massie, Duncan Minshull, Alan Ross and Pam Fraser Solomon.

About the Author

D. J. Taylor is the author of eleven novels, including
Kept
(2006), which was a Publishers Weekly Best Book,
Derby Day
(2011), longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and
The Windsor Faction
(2013), a joint winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. His nonfiction includes a biography of Thackeray and
Orwell: The Life
(2003), which won the Whitbread Biography Award. His journalism appears in a variety of newspapers and periodicals, including the
Independent
, the
Guardian
, the
Times Literary Supplement
, and the
Wall Street Journal
. Taylor lives in Norwich, England, with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore, and their three sons.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by D. J. Taylor

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1524-0

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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