Brothers of the Head (2 page)

Hundreds of tern wheeled up from a concealed lagoon, sped seawards, and disappeared. L'Estrange is a bird sancuary, preserved by the National Trust. Albert Howe is its warden. I could find no blot on his record of service. His is a job for those who prefer a lonely life, or have reason to wish to shun other people.

Terns and gulls were the only signs of life. Then I climbed a line of dunes and saw two boys fighting some way off. Locked together, they stood in waving grass, their figures outlined against the waters of Deepdale Bay. They punched each other with concentration.

I paused. Isolation lent a supernatural quality to their violence. As I went forward again, the dark figures tumbled over and disappeared into a sea of grass.

Arriving on this bleak Head, one perceives only a flat and tumbled expanse of land, encroached on in most directions by the North Sea. However, a walk across it provides a different picture. I was following a faint track which led up and down through shallow depressions and low mounds; all about was a world of miniature valleys, narrow eminences, tiny cliffs and secret hollows. Dunes of yellow and grey sand, scantily covered in vegetation, marched towards the skyline. These features had been shaped more by the forces of wind and water than by the passive ground itself, as bone is shaped by pressure of tendon and blood.

In order to negotiate a dale, I had to jump a clayey creek and climb a bank. There were the lads, fighting in a hollow almost beneath my feet.

I had heard no sound from them. The constant noise of air, water and reed accounted for that.

Startled, I looked down at where they sprawled, fighting each other steadily with a machine-like hatred.

They might have been sixteen years of age. They were of similar build, stocky, with broad backs. They dressed similarly. They wore the nondescript blue jeans which were the prevailing fashion with young people of both sexes at that time, and woollen sweaters. Despite the chill of the day, they went barefoot.

The great difference between them lay in their faces. The boy who rolled with his back on the ground had fairish hair and a long face. His face was red with exertion; one eye had been partly closed by a blow, so that he appeared to leer up at me with what would be termed in court ‘a malevolent expression'. His cheeks were stained by tears and dust, his hair was full of sand.

His brother had black hair which stood stiffly up from his skull. His face was round, even squat, his brows low, his mouth bright and flat against his cheeks. He also glared at me. I saw immediately that this dark boy had a deformity, a second head, growing from his left shoulder.

These were the Howe twins, Tom and Barry.

‘Hello,' I said. ‘I've come to collect you.'

They turned identical surly looks at me, nimbly leaping up. I thought for a moment they were going to attack as they faced me defiantly. Then they turned as one, still locked together, and went bounding off across the dunes.

It was clear to see then that they were one, inseparably joined in the middle, just as my client had stated.

I stood watching them go, clutching my throat, rattled by coming on them so suddenly. They were making for the huddle of low buildings Stebbings had indicated as their home, the best part of a kilometre distant.

There was nothing to do but follow after, keeping to the trail which now led through rabbit-clipped turf.

Nearing the buildings, I came to a piece of ground which someone had at some time attempted to bring in to cultivation. A few cabbage stumps formed the sum total of its crop. More poor tokens of rural living followed: an old broken boat lying upside down, abandoned lobster pots, a collapsed workshed, a fenced patch of ground which contained a flower-bed and some hens in a coop. Beyond stood the house and another building.

The house was built of stuccoed brick up to window level and lath and plaster above that. One side was painted with tar or bitumen and was propped by a large old beam. The general impression was ramshackle.

Afternoon sun made the windows bleary. It was a sick-looking house. Paint had long since peeled from porch, door and window-frames.

An oddity of the site was that the house had been built directly to the south of a stone ruin, so that all view of the sea was excluded from its chief windows. Presumably the builder had intended to protect the house from the more savage storms blowing in off the sea. Ordnance Survey maps label the ruin L'Estrange Abbey.

Almost as soon as I had tapped on the door of the house, it opened and a man's head appeared.

‘Yes.'

I said, ‘I am Henry Couling of Beauchamp-Fielding Associates. You are expecting me.'

‘You'd better come in.' Neither his face nor his voice betrayed much more expression than his windowpanes. He never gave me his name, but it was apparent from the start that he was Albert Howe. Howe was in his early fifties, a spare man with a suggestion of strength about him. His complexion was brown and weathered, and brown was the colour of his sparse hair. His dress was a khaki shirt with a flapping leather jacket over it, stained cavalry twill trousers, and a pair of boots of vaguely military design. He stood aside to let me in.

It was not exactly a welcome, but I was glad to escape from the wind. The door opened straight into a parlour in which a fire of driftwood was burning. So cheering a sight was it that I immediately moved across to the hearth and stooped to warm my hands.

‘Is it always as cold as this on L'Estrange Head?' I asked looking up at him. He remained – rather stupidly, I thought – by the door.

‘'Tisn't so bad today,' he said. ‘We heard the cuckoo this morning, across them marshes.'

He jerked his head in indication of the direction of the marshes to which he referred.

His was a melancholy room. The ruin of the abbey cast per-manent shadows into it. A light bulb burned overhead, picking out in sickly detail a profusion of birds and small animals which covered the walls. Rough shelving housed these stuffed mementoes of the living world outside; wherever one looked, dead eyes glinted. A well-loaded bookcase stood in one corner. Table and chairs and two old battered armchairs completed the furnishing. The room lacked, as they say, a woman's touch; despite the fire, it felt cold and damp, and smelt of old seaweed, as if high tide had been known to lap over the threshold of the door – a not unlikely assumption, I reflected.

A kitchen led off on one side, its door standing halfway open. A dog barked sporadically there, as if tied up and not hopeful of improving its position. I looked in that direction, to find two pairs of eyes observing me; two heads were immediately withdrawn.

As I rose, I saw that a loaf of bread and the leavings of a poor meal lay on the table, together with a dead seabird. The seabird was stretched out on a board with its pinions taped outspread and its gizzard slit open.

Howe came awkwardly back from the door and sat at the table, where he proceeded to finish a mess of bread, cheese and pickle on his plate. As if aware of a certain social boorishness in what he was doing, he glanced up at me and gave a jerk of his head, coupled with a quick funny expression and a wink, as if to say, ‘This is the way I am.'

Drawing myself up, I said, ‘I take it that you are Mr Albert Howe, sole surviving parent of the twins, Thomas and Barry Howe.'

‘Tom and Barry, that's right. The twins. I expect you'd like a cup of tea. Robbie! Tea, gel!'

This last call was echoed by activity in the kitchen, and presently a girl came forth with a big brown teapot. Setting it down on the table, she poured a mug of tea and shyly proffered it to me.

She was a good-looking girl in a countrified way, with big hazel eyes and a complexion as brown as her father's. Her hair was plentiful, hanging down between her shoulder blades in an old-fashioned plait or pigtail. Like her brothers, she wore faded jeans and went barefoot, a slovenly habit, especially in women. Her figure was well developed; I judged her to be twenty years of age.

There was less unfriendliness in her gaze than in her father's. As I accepted the mug of tea and sat down, unbidden, at the table beside the impaled bird, she said, ‘So you are the lawyer as has come to take my brothers away.'

I patted the briefcase I had brought with me. ‘I am acting on behalf of Bedderwick Walker Entertainments, with whom I understand your father is keen to come to an agreement. I have a copy of the contract here, Mr Howe, and will be happy to familiarize you with its contents. We can go over it clause by clause, if you so desire, provided I am able to meet Stebbings and his boat at your jetty in approximately two hours' time.'

Howe crammed the last of his crust into his mouth, masticated for a while, and then said, ‘It's for the best, Robbie, I keep a-telling you. The boys can't hang around here for ever and a day, not now's they're growed up.'

‘That's correct,' I said, snapping open the briefcase. ‘The contract guarantees you and your sons a substantial salary, payable monthly, for a period of three years. It gives Bedderwick Walker the option of renewal of contract for a further two years, at a fee subject to negotiation. Bearing in mind that Bedderwick Walker will invest a considerable amount of money in training and projecting your sons, the arrangements are eminently generous.'

‘You're still taking my brothers away from home,' said the girl. ‘Who will look after them, I'd like to know.'

Ignoring her, I spread the contract out before Howe, pushing aside the butter and a jar of pickle.

‘I trust that your sons are ready to return to London with me?'

‘They're willing enough to go, yes.'

He looked up with a helpless expression, and said to his daughter, ‘Robbie, see as they're all packed, will you?'

As Howe picked up the contract to study it, I saw his hand was shaking. He had well-shaped hands, with long fingers. He watched Robbie as, without another word, she padded into the kitchen on her bare feet.

‘It's hard to know what's best, Mr …' he said gazing at the dead bird as if addressing it. ‘May and I got on so well, we helped each other with everything as came up. That's her in the photo over there.'

He pointed to a framed photograph of his dead wife, standing on the mantelpiece. A sepia face stared out at the world from under a large hat.

‘I'm sure she would be happy with the contract as it stands.'

Still he wouldn't bring his attention back to the document.

‘That May was a very fine woman,' he said. ‘One of the best, that she was.'

I offered no comment.

‘It wasn't my fault she died. Nor did I ought to really blame the lads for her death, because they couldn't help coming into the world the way they was. Though I feel bitter at times … Anyone would. I took up taxidermy when she went – got just about every bird as ever visits the Head pinned up here on my walls, Mister … Though I haven't got a roseate tern, which is uncommon scarce these days …'

He managed this speech with another comic face, giving me another wink and a jerk of the head as he changed the subject away from his dead wife, almost as if he were making fun of himself. The effect was somehow as sinister as it was ludicrous, and I directed his attention to the contract.

We went through the document carefully, Howe showing himself to be less foolish than his gauche social manner suggested. In my profession, I am accustomed to dealing with people who live solely for money. Albert Howe, I discerned, was indifferent to it; he wanted a fair future for his sons and believed he had secured one; the question of remuneration was a minor one to him. This factor alone set him apart from ninety per cent of the population.

As he signed the copies of the contract, the daughter appeared again, wearing a torn plastic apron over her jeans. She began to clear the table.

‘The boys are ready, Dad,' she said. She sniffed as if she had been weeping.

‘Come forth, lads, don't be shy!' called Howe, jerking his head.

The dog barked in the kitchen, and Tom and Barry came forth.

Contrary to my expectations, the twins were conveyed to London without difficulty. They loitered on the way to the jetty but raised no objection to climbing into Stebbings' boat when it arrived. They waved farewell to their sister in rather a perfunctory fashion.

As previously arranged, the car awaiting me at Deepdale Staithe conveyed us straight to London; I surmised that a rail journey might have its difficulties. Apart from visits to hospital and one appearance on a medical programme on BBC TV (the appearance which had inspired Zak Bedderwick to sign them up), the Howe twins had scarcely left L'Estrange Head, never mind Norfolk, until now. The journey passed without incident. They were interested in everything, especially when we entered the environs of London. It was dark when I deposited them at Zak Bedderwick's flat.

The car then drove me to my own apartment, where I was glad to take a sherry and a warm bath, and play myself Telemann sonatas.

Zak Bedderwick was every inch a business man. He was successful in the competitive world of pop music, and would have been equally successful in banking or oil. As such, he was in my opinion a rarity. Most of the big names in his field can grasp neither their own business nor rock-and-roll. At this time, there was nobody to rival his flair or the range of his activities.

He had appointed a manager by the name of Nick Sidney to concentrate on the Howe twins and lick them into promotable shape. The twins stayed in Zak's flat overnight and no longer. The next morning, Nick Sidney arrived promptly at ten o'clock and took them down to Humbleden. I doubt if Zak ever saw them personally after that occasion; like everyone else, he had a morbid curiosity to inspect Siamese twins at first hand; once that curiosity was satisfied, his interest was purely financial.

The rest of the story hardly involves me. Bedderwick Walker was not my only concern, and at this period I became increasingly involved with a lawsuit pending over the nefarious actions of a certain Foreign Affairs Minister of a certain African state.