Secret Story (8 page)

“God, that’s a look,” Shell said. “You want to snap that, Tom.”

As Tom photographed the scowl that appeared to have sent Dudley into a crouch, Vincent said “Do you think you need to see things more from your character’s viewpoint?”

“There’s nobody else’s in that story,” Shell objected. “If that’s a woman’s view of anything I’ve just sprouted a knob.”

“Try telling us about him,” Walt urged Dudley. “What’s his background? What’s his tale?”

Patricia wondered if Dudley was in some kind of pain to be huddling so low. “I’ll have to think,” he muttered.

“What’s anybody need to think about?” said Shell. “They’re all the same, his kind of thug. There’s so many these days they must be breeding.”

“How would this work?” Walt said. “Tell Dudley how you see his character and maybe that’ll help him figure what he’s like.”

“Nothing like you think,” Dudley said.

“Hey, that sounds like a challenge. Let’s hear from you, Shell.”

“I told you, he’ll be like they all are. Tortured animals when he was a kid. Scared of women. Hasn’t got a girlfriend. Likely brought up by a single mum. I’m not dissing them, but she’d have kept telling him how he was better than everyone else, treating
him like every time he farted somebody should bottle it and sell it. Only deep down he’ll know he’s nothing and hate her for not stopping him knowing. That’ll be another reason he’s got it in for women even more than most men have. So whenever he’s feeling more than usually knobless, because I don’t reckon he’ll have much to play with and anyway he won’t be able to get it to salute, he goes creeping after women on their own so he can pretend he’s worth knowing about. Most of the time he can’t catch them, because women aren’t as stupid as him. Just now and then one of them’s unlucky, thinks he’s so pathetic he has to be harmless. Any chance of another drink without me having to screw anyone?”

As Walt signalled at the empty glass she was brandishing, Vincent ventured to deal with the silence. “I wouldn’t mind him not managing to catch someone. We could see it from his point of view.”

“He’s nothing like that, none of it,” Dudley said and scraped his chair backwards.

“Looks like it went home if you’re off home,” Shell remarked.

“I’m going to the toilet.”

Patricia thought it might be time to suggest that Shell finish harassing him, but the buxom Beatle was wheeling dinner to their table. As Dudley emerged from the door marked Roadies next to Groupies, Shell called “What have you been doing to yourself in there? I hope you’re just trying to walk like John Wayne.”

“I’ve no choice at the moment,” Dudley said through a fixed grin as he sank with some caution onto his chair.

“Everyone’s got them. I expect you’d say your character’s got none and it’s all our fault, the rest of us.”

“He’s got plenty and he makes them. He loves what he does.”

Shell dismissed his vehemence with more laughter than humour. “You haven’t told us why you’ve got no choice.”

“I was attacked at work.”

“Why, for having a big head?”

“A girl wanted me to find her a sex job.”

“Don’t tell us you got close enough to catch something.”

“I said I was attacked,” Dudley protested, wriggling gingerly on the chair. “Just because we aren’t allowed to offer table dancing and the rest of it.”

Shell chewed a forkful of enchilada while she built up a smirk. “What’d she do, twist your equipment to make you deliver?”

Dudley poked at his ratatouille with his knife, apparently in search of any element that might appeal to him. “She told her mother and she came in as well.”

“You never got yourself attacked by two women at once. How much would you pay for that if you had to?” Shell’s mouth turned wryer as she enquired “What did you say to make them bend your banana?”

“They kept saying I made out she was a prostitute.”

“And you weren’t thinking anything like that.”

“I may have thought it, but—”

“What gives you the right to think about women that way? No wonder you tell nasty little stories. Women ought to cover themselves up or they’re whores and they deserve whatever men dream up to get their own back ’cos they feel threatened, is that what it’s about? And women that can see through men as well. Good on the girl and her mother. I hope they made you realise we aren’t things you can fantasise about however you like.”

“They didn’t touch me. They wouldn’t have dared,” Dudley said, waving his knife. “They had to send her brother. He attacked me in the middle of a crowd of people. I called for help and nobody did anything.”

“Pity it wasn’t the women instead of just another man putting on his hormones in the street. Funny all the same,” Shell spluttered and lifted a song-sheet napkin to wipe her mouth.

Tom contented himself with a grunt that could have expressed amusement. Once the unresponsiveness of the rest of the party had made itself felt, Walt said “I hope you’re not in too much pain, Dudley, and I guess I’m speaking for just about everyone. Did you want to bounce off what Shell said before?”

“I’ve said all I’ve got to say for now.”

“Don’t say you’re sulking because I told you all about your character,” Shell cried. “That’s too sad.”

“Give the guy a break,” Patricia thought Walt could have said rather earlier. “We aren’t here to stop him working.”

Shell shovelled a large forkful of enchilada into her mouth and helped it down with the last of her second jigger. “Thanks for the nosh, Walt. If I’m not allowed to talk, no point me being here.”

“Now who’s sulking?” Dudley said.

Shell marched halfway to the door and swung around. “If anyone wants to hear what I’ve got to say,” she announced loud enough to hush the Japanese, “I’ll be at the Egremont Ferry on Dud’s side of the river on Friday. Hang on, though, it’s a girls’ night. You’ll just have to imagine what I may be saying about you, Dud.”

As the door shut behind her, wafting in more of the heat that appeared to be condensing on Dudley’s brow, Walt said “Is it easier for you to think now?”

“Not yet,” Dudley said and dragged his wrist across his forehead.

“If Shell’s got you thinking how to kill someone nobody would blame you,” Vincent said. “Use it if you can. It’s all material.”

“I’ll try,” Dudley said before risking a forkful of ratatouille that did away with whatever expression might otherwise have gained his face.

“That’s it, eat hearty,” Walt urged. “Maybe when we’re through dining you’ll find it’s fed your brain.”

Patricia saw that Dudley hadn’t much time for the notion, or perhaps only for revealing any more of his ideas. At least she needn’t blame herself. She shut off the tape recorder in case it was helping to inhibit him, but he seemed committed to clearing his plate. When a flash paled his face, she started as he did. It felt as if the tension Shell had left behind had exploded into lightning. Tom hadn’t sneaked a shot; the Japanese were photographing the interior. “Don’t worry, nobody’s spying on you,” she told Dudley, and caught sight of an answering glint in his eyes.

As Dudley took another pace up the concrete slipway, it began to rain. Across the river any lights in the warehouses appeared to have been put out by the nine o’clock darkness, while beside them the illuminated Liverpool waterfront glowed with a rainy aura. Beyond the top of the ramp he could see the low roof of the Egremont Ferry, but nobody would see him. Nevertheless when another wave of the rising tide sent him father up the slipway he crouched low as if he’d been seized by his bruised crotch. Before he could straighten up, the downpour that was visible across the river found him.

He hadn’t waited for hours below the promenade to be driven away now. At least the rain wasn’t as cold as the waves that had taken him unawares just once. In a very few moments it soaked his hair and was streaming down his face as it plastered his shirt and trousers to him. It enraged him, and so did a wave that took
advantage of his distraction to slop over his ankle and spill into his shoe. None of this made him show his teeth in an expression he shared with the dark, however. It was the woman’s amplified voice that blundered out of the Egremont Ferry. “Here’s the treat you’ve been waiting for, girls. Shell Garridge and her world of wankers.”

As all the women he’d heard arriving at the pub began to cheer and clap and stamp, he trudged up the slipway until his eyes were above the edge of the promenade. A cyclist without lights was pedalling desperately towards Seacombe, where there was still a ferry, but otherwise the road overlooked by the town hall and large lit houses on top of grassy slopes was deserted. Across a wide space occupied by benches and a few dripping streetlamps, the windows of the pub reminded him of glass cases in an aquarium. In the case that contained the bar he saw Shell leap to her feet and throw her peaked cap down like a challenge in front of the beer-pumps, exposing a scalp that looked raw and bald through the distortions of water. She wrapped the cord of a microphone around her wrist and began to strut back and forth, putting Dudley in mind of an outsize bath toy bobbing on a string. “Men,” she said.

This brought a chorus of derision that sounded by no means entirely humorous. Dudley saw a figure behind the bar throw up his hands and use them to protect his head. No doubt the insecure blob of his face was amusingly defensive too. “No worries, no boos for your booze,” Shell told him. “Carry on pulling us pints and you’re safe. You won’t be pulling anyone tonight, though, so don’t go pulling anything else. Which reminds me, girls, I heard about a feller who got pulled in the street this week. A bit more than pulled, more like yanked and tied in a knot, that’s if he’d got enough to tie a knot in.”

Dudley needn’t lurk beneath the promenade as if he had something to be ashamed of. Beyond the ramp an area the size of his bedroom was unlit, and in any case the rain would make him
unrecognisable if not invisible from the pub. He stepped boldly onto the promenade, baring wet teeth at the additional downpour, as Shell finished waiting for the hoots of gleeful mirth to subside. “Pity it wasn’t us girls that gave him what he was asking for,” she said.

Dudley glared at her prancing fluid shape and clenched his fists as he folded his arms, a gesture that seemed to squeeze a juice of rain out of him. “It was on our behalf, though,” Shell was saying. “What’s he like? He’s a civil servant, you know the breed. About as civil as a teenager having a row with her mam about staying out all night, and thinks everyone’s his servant, like we ought to touch our forelock and call him sir. Face like a rat sniffing in a bin. Dressed up in a suit and tie so nobody’ll notice him skulking off to a sex show to have it off with his fist. Wouldn’t you know he works in the jobs office.”

The derisive uproar this provoked coincided with an especially sodden gust of rain in Dudley’s face. They were only jeering at his job, he thought, and it mightn’t be his much longer. He shook water off his face and blinked it out of his eyes, and was close to laughing aloud at how little Shell knew about him when she said “They think we’re a lower species ’cos we’ve got to crawl to them for jobs, don’t they? Here’s the worst. One girl went to him and when she’d finished telling him all the stuff they make us tell them so they can look at us like we shouldn’t have bothered getting out of bed, he treated her like she was a whore.”

The pub erupted with hissing louder than the storm. The women were behaving as if they’d seen a villain. Dudley grinned until his mouth dripped, because they couldn’t see him. “I’m not saying I approve of the job she went for, like,” Shell said, “but it’s her choice how to use her body, right? The joke is it’s men like him that see women’s pay is so crap they’re better off selling themselves, and men like him that pay for them, and now it’s
men like him are trying to make them ashamed of doing it as well. We all know why, don’t we? He’s scared of real women in case they mess up his fantasies about us. That’s the kind of joke that doesn’t make me laugh.”

“Tell us about what happened to him,” a woman’s hoarse shout urged.

“Seems her brother caught up with this dud in the street. Maybe he thought if the feller was going to think up sexy stuff about her it should hurt him to. The way I heard it, he twisted his tap till it needed a plumber. What’s funnier, the street was full of people and none of them did anything when the dud started squealing for help. Must have known he deserved it, or they thought he was busking. He’d have sounded like a lot of different singers. Here’s a what do you call them classical thingies, an alto. Here’s the soppy one, a soprano. Here’s a choirboy. Here’s a eunuch.”

As Shell demonstrated by shrieking increasingly high, the ache from which the rain had distracted him renewed its attack on Dudley’s groin. “I told him I was here tonight,” Shell was saying. “He wouldn’t have got in, but he might have hung around outside to listen, only it’s pissing down so much that would have chased him off. He’ll be making up stories about shutting up women by doing them in.”

He didn’t move as she pressed her face against the glass. He liked the way the rain on the window made her face look as if bits were being torn off to wriggle for his entertainment. “Here’s a bunch of women nobody’s going to shut up,” she thundered as she turned her back on him. “Women, we’re the real wild bunch, and men had better know it. Haul on your pump, lad, if you don’t want me ending up with no voice.”

Dudley wished she had. He was more aware of the relentless downpour than of anything else she said. Male drivers raging on
the roads, single fathers making fools of themselves by trying to raise daughters, solitary men embarrassed by washing their clothes in front of women in the laundrette: none of this involved him. She imagined she had dealt with him; she thought she’d turned him into a joke. He cupped his hands around his ache and kept crouching over it as though the rain was beating him down, when in fact he was adding every gibe she made about men to his fury, a hard cold lump at the centre of him. Even her abandoning the subject of him, and his having to sweep rain out of his ears in case she revived it, enraged him. What right did she and her cronies have to cast him out in the storm? What kind of man would cower behind the bar and reduce himself to acting as their accomplice? Dudley couldn’t tell if his eyes were blurred by pain or rage or water by the time she said “Well, girls, are we done with the wankers for another week?”