Life's Lottery (47 page)

Jasper gulps. His eyes are wide. ‘Dad, help me.’

Your heart freezes.

‘Think of Zazza.’

If you help your son, go to 123. If you refuse, go to 136.

Y
ou get the fuck out of there.

Driving away from Sutton Mallet, it all hits you. You just manage to pull over in a lay-by as the wave breaks. It’s an intensely physical reaction, as strong as orgasm. You shake for a full five minutes, teeth chattering, skin icy. You think you’ll be sick, but you aren’t.

You have to leave. The situation, the town, the country. You have to get out. Or very bad things will come down.

Shadow-spiders crawl all over you. Their venom paralyses you, calming the shivers. You have never been more afraid.

You don’t even go back to town to pick up your things. You drive away from everything. You have to go first to your London flat – nobody is home, thank the Lord – and pick up documents. You have to be able to get your money. You need your passport.

Then you get off the map.

* * *

You never find out the rest of the story. You try never even to think of the story.

And so on.

Y
ou take unpaid leave of absence and order Chris to take the twins and stay with her parents.

‘You’re insane,’ she says. ‘We’ll lose the flat.’

Better that than the twins, you think.

‘I love you,’ she says, kissing you.’

You get on the InterCity 125 for Bristol at seven in the morning. Chris stands on the platform at Paddington and watches you go.

From Bristol, you get the local train.

It rattles south-west. You find yourself humming ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’.

* * *

You’re the only one to get off at Sedgwater Halt. The train whoops as it leaves. Tumbleweed-like bundles of rubbish are dragged along the track in its wake.

Across the track, you see a welcoming committee. James is waiting for you. He leans on a stick and is wearing a combat jacket. You cross the track and embrace him.

With James are a couple of hippies, Graham Foulk and Gully Eastment. Graham wears a long, ragged coat and a patched leather, wide-brimmed hat. Gully is in pink dungarees, war tattoos on his bare arms, bars of coloured paint on his forehead and cheeks.

‘They’re with us, Pilgrim,’ James says.

You accept it.

Blackbirds, startled by the train, resettle comfortably on the Sedgwater Halt sign.

The four of you walk through town, slowly, like
The Wild Bunch.
Actually, you walk slowly because of James’s leg. You don’t need to say anything.

Hackwill’s influence is everywhere. A council election is coming up. Hackwill posters are plastered over all the boarded-up small businesses shut down to make way for his Discount Development. More than a few of the posters are defaced, distorting Hackwill’s bland face with a monstrous snarl and glowing red eyes.

You walk down the middle of Main Street, which has been pedestrianised. Eyes follow you. Some loafers get off the street, scurrying for their phones. The manager of the Wimpy Bar spits at your trailing shadows, and James stares him down, driving him back inside with a look and a laugh.

You wonder what the hell you’re doing. This is Somerset in 1989, not Shinbone a hundred years earlier.

But the situation’s the same. Varmints and claim-jumpers and rustlers are running the town; and a man’s got to do something about that, a man’s got to take a stand to protect his family and future, a man’s got to kick five kinds of shit out of the scumbag who picked on him at school.

A Mini van is parked by the Corn Exchange. A Morticia Addams lookalike leans on it, smoking a cigarette in a holder.

‘This is Victoria,’ James says.

Victoria extends her knuckles to be held. ‘Charmed,’ she says. ‘I remember you from college.’

Victoria Conyer. She turns out to be Gully’s girlfriend.

Everyone in the group has a grudge against Hackwill. He’s been cracking down on hippies, moving on squatters and travellers, clearing the town for his investments. James gave Graham the keys to your old house, so he could move his people in.

‘Hackwill’s holed up in the council offices, Pilgrim,’ James tells you. ‘He’s got his hired people. You’ll know some of them. Shane Bush, Dickie Kell, Mary Yatman, Pete Gompers. Oh, and Sean Rye’s in tight with him. They’ve been robbing the town blind together.’

‘There isn’t any Discount Development,’ says Victoria. ‘It’s all a con. Money sucked out of the community and salted away.’

She opens up the back of her van and James hands out guns.

‘Army surplus,’ he explains. ‘Careful, that’s loaded.’

You’re given a heavy automatic and a lightweight sub-machine-gun. James shows you how to cock them for fire. The two hippies and Victoria have obviously been practising.

Passers-by hurry on, pretending not to notice. It is close to twelve, and the sun is overhead.

‘Jimmy,’ you protest.

Your thought dies. You see determination in your brother’s eyes.

You think of the threat to J and J. You’ll do anything to protect your own. You chamber a round in the automatic and stick it in your coat pocket.

‘By the way,’ James says, ‘they have guns too.’

Guns make everything different. The town looks like a movie set. You can see it from above, looking down on your little group. Disciplined extras move out of the way, clearing a path between the Corn Exchange and the council offices.

You can’t think beyond the end titles.

You still hear Gene Pitney singing ‘Liberty Valance’.

‘It’s our town,’ James says. ‘Let’s make a difference.’

The five of you walk, guns in hands. Now, people hastily get out of your way.

Hackwill knows you’re coming.

* * *

You stand at the entrance to the council car park. It’s after midday, sun glinting off windshields. Employees trickle out of a block-like modern building. The plate-glass and pastel pasteboard offices were built two years ago to replace the Victorian town hall. Hackwill Developments handled all the contracts, of course. Walls are already patched white where they’ve been rained on too frequently.

Graham unslings an assault rifle and walks up to a chained-off parking-space. A new Jaguar shines. Graham rakes the car with fire, shattering windows, bursting tyres, putting fist-sized holes in the bodywork. Some people scream. There’s a rush to get out of the car park. This will be a long lunch hour. Gully fires over the heads of fleeing office workers.

‘Save it for when it counts,’ James snaps at him.

Gully salutes and a red hole replaces his right eye. He stands, wavering, for a moment, and collapses, pole-axed.

You all duck, taking cover behind cars. You can’t see which window the shot came from.

The Jaguar explodes. Someone has taken out the petrol tank. You feel a wash of warmth and are slammed by the blast. A loose car door flips up in the air, turns over several times, and thunks down like a karate chop on the roof of a Volvo.

James stands up, like a stiff target at a firing-range, and looses a burst of fire at the front of the building. Plate glass shatters and hails on to the grass verge, sparkling in the sunlight. James drops down again. Shots slam the air where he was standing.

It’s a stand-off. They can’t get out. But you can’t go in. And your side is one down.

James pulls a grenade out of his jacket, takes the pin out, counts to five, and lobs it through a smashed first-floor window. There’s a
crump
and an orange burst of flame, blasting out more windows.

Someone inside screams. And stops. One all.

Graham and Victoria are gathered round.

‘On three,’ James says. ‘One…’

You think of Chris.

‘Two…’

The twins.

‘Three…’

You all make a run for the main entrance. James stumbles on his stiff leg. You grab his arm, hauling him along. Bullets fly around you. You crash through the doors and spill into the pastel-tone reception area. It’s deserted, the desk unmanned.

Hackwill posters and announcements of council events are pinned to a corkboard. A row of uncomfortable school-surplus chairs are for waiting complainants. You flop down on them, still on a rush, breathing heavily, fringe damp with fear-sweat. Victoria has a gash on her arm from flying glass. None of you has been shot.

The indicator shows the lift is coming down from the third floor.

James makes a snap decision. ‘It’s a bluff. Cover the stairs.’

Graham takes aim at the double doors to the stairwell. Someone comes through and Graham shoots him in the chest, careering him backwards like a burst jellyfish. It is Pete Gompers. Captain of the rugby team at Dr Marling’s. Bastard.

The lift doors open. It’s empty. James unpins a couple of grenades, drops them into the lift, reaches in to stab the fourth-floor button, and stands back, letting the doors close. The lift goes up.

The explosion shudders the whole building. A dusting of plaster falls, speckling you all. A striplight falls, in sparks.

‘That has to hurt,’ you say.

Graham turns to say something and gasps. There is a red line round his throat, under his beard. Someone small has whipped up behind him, from behind the reception desk, and looped cheesewire around his neck.

It’s a blonde woman, in a police uniform. Mary Yatman. You remember her. Scary Mary. Besides the cheesewire, she has a ladylike pistol, a length of silencer stuck to the barrel. She angles it against Graham’s head.

Graham’s arms stick out like a blind zombie’s, hands contorting. A pulse of blood dribbles from the wire around his neck. You all level guns at Mary, but Graham is in the way.

She backs through the doors, taking care not to trip over Pete. Graham is dragged with her, gurgling nastily. She pushes him at arm’s length as she goes through the door, leaving him behind. She lets the cheesewire go. Graham draws a breath. His face bursts outward. The bitch has shot him in the back of the head.

Enraged, you crash through the doors after Mary. James and Victoria are with you. You all three fire upwards, filling the stairwell with lead. The gun-discharge stink you’ve read about but never experienced gets into your nose. Firing in an enclosed area assaults your eardrums with a ringing that might well last the rest of your life.

Mary has scampered upstairs, out of the way.

Fire alarms are going off.

It hits you that you have yet to kill anybody. Besides possession of unlicensed weapons, the worst you can be charged with is vandalising council property.

You don’t want to widow Chris and orphan the twins.

Alarm bells still ring.

James looks upwards, at the stairs. Robert Hackwill is still in the building somewhere.

‘Come on,’ he says.

If you go up, go to 130. If you get out, go to 145.

Y
ou attach the red wire. A tiny sizzle. A shock, like static electricity, in your fingertips.

‘Oh dear,’ you say.

Everything disappears, in a rush.

Go to 0.

‘
I
couldn’t live without you,’ you say. ‘Sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ Vic replies, hugging you.

‘There’s hope yet,’ you say, almost as a question.

Vic gets her fingers into your hair and fluffs. ‘There’s hope,’ she says, tenderly.

You think you both have the same hope.

And so on.

Y
ou get to go first.

‘I don’t think we should get married.’

‘You think we should split up.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘These are your fucking rules, Keith.’

Are they?

‘Then we should split up.’

‘Fine,’ she says.

‘What were you going to vote for?’

A pause. A tiny smile. ‘To split up.’

‘Were you?’ Relief. You can get away clean.

‘I don’t know.’

A plunge to doom. ‘What do you mean?’

She swallows a sniffle. ‘I was waiting to hear your vote.’

‘You hadn’t made up your mind?’

She doesn’t cry. ‘No.’

‘I don’t want to split up, Chris.’

‘You want to get married?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know.’

You leave it at that. And you leave.

Feeling bloody rotten, you bolt for home. Only it’s not there, at least not for you.

You drive down to Sedgwater and are almost in your old street when you remember the family house is gone. You turn round to drive out to Sutton Mallet.

You think of the Sutton Mallet house as Phil’s place. It only has one spare bedroom and James is camped there. You end up on the settee downstairs.

Phil gets up at six to do an hour’s run. He always wakes you up by clattering through the room with a cheery ‘Don’t mind me, keep sawing wood.’

At this point in your life, you want your old room.

* * *

Chris goes to Portugal for a sabbatical. You feel an aching loss, all the time. However, it’s going to get worse. You know that when you hear Chris is seeing someone else, you will shatter. And that’s only a matter of time.

James suggests you should organise an all-girls orienteering week in the Peak District and shag as many of the clients as possible. That way, you’d even get paid. Advice like that doesn’t help.

You keep tripping over your spilled guts, tracking through them in scummy slippers.

This is the worst bust-up of your life.

* * *

You were with Chris eleven years. Longer than Mum has known Phil, longer than Laraine’s marriage to that bloke called Fred. Over one-third of your life. When you got together, there was a Labour government, Tom Baker was
Doctor Who
and Tom Robinson was gay.

Now, it’s the future. It’s nearly the 1990s. Is there a place for you in this cold, Chris-free, rootless world? It is as if Arachnoid invaders have taken over. You were so wrapped up in Chris that you didn’t notice. Now the blinkers are gone, and the shadow-spiders are everywhere, spinning webs.