Started Early, Took My Dog (41 page)

(
Marjorie Collier’s living room/Int/Night
)

Marjorie Collier
Who are you? What are you doing here?

First Thug
We’re looking for Vincent, where is he?

Marjorie Collier
I don’t know, I don’t know where he is.

Second Thug
Do you think we’re stupid, love?

Marjorie Collier
You can’t just barge in here like this. Get out!

First Thug
Not until we see Vince, sweetheart.
I suggest you get your blue-eyed boy
on the blower right now and tell him
his old mum’s going to be taking a trip
down the boneyard if he doesn’t get
back here double-quick.

Marjorie Collier
I will do no such thing.
I didn’t fight Hitler just to give in
to schoolyard bullies like you.

(
She looks around, spots the poker by the fireside
.)

First Thug (to Second Thug)
Game old bird, isn’t she?

Second Thug (to First Thug)
Stupid old bag, more like.
(to Marjorie)
Don’t try and be a heroine, love.

Marjorie Collier (making a grab for the poker)
You don’t frighten me.

(
They struggle. First Thug hits Marjorie and throws her to the floor. She hits her head on the fender
.)

Not with a bang but a whimper. Director had handed her the script personally, features arranged sympathetically. A notice of execution. Poor old Marjorie Collier was coming to a sticky end. Sticky toffee pudding end.

‘Watch out, Till,’ Julia said as he approached. ‘It looks like he’s bringing you your invitation to board the death ship.’

‘Well, this is it, Tilly darling,’ the director said. ‘The end.’

Now it was Saskia who was treating her like an invalid. She had brought her up a mug of warm milk with honey in it and a plate of digestives, along with her own pashmina which she tucked around Tilly’s shoulders.

‘It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I know when I was killed in that awful car crash in
Hollyoaks
– my boyfriend was a psycho stalker who was planning on planting a bomb in the church at my funeral – remember that, who could forget? When I first read the script it gave me the real heebie-jeebies, but I was nominated for best actress in a soap, so it all turned out OK in the end. You’ll see, everything will be fine. And anyway, you could do with a good rest, couldn’t you? Not the RIP sort, obviously, just put your feet up for a bit, watch some daytime telly, treat yourself to a visit to a spa.’

Thank goodness Saskia finally ran out of steam and, making a vague gesture towards Tilly propped up on pillows, said, ‘Well, night then.’

‘Night,’ Tilly said, relieved to be able to remove her wig at last.

Saskia couldn’t hide her happiness at the thought of Tilly leaving, she’d already had a guarantee from the production staff that she would never have to share digs with anyone again, although there were rumours that she would be leaving soon anyway. Apparently she was ‘off to LA’ to try her luck. ‘Little fish, big pond,’ Julia said. ‘She’ll drown.’

‘Well, not
drown
, I hope,’ Tilly said. ‘Just splash about helplessly for a bit.’

Of course, Saskia was so cheerful because her boyfriend was arriving tomorrow night. Not the rugby player, apparently he was yesterday’s news (literally). The new one was ‘a civilian’, which was confusing because he was actually in the army, a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards.

‘Don’t you love a man in uniform?’ Saskia said to Tilly.

The closest Tilly had ever got to a man in uniform was in a production of
HMS Pinafore
, she’d had rather a nice singing voice in her early days. Funny, she’d forgotten all about that production. Wondered if she could still hit the notes. Saskia’s lieutenant was called Rupert and apparently he came from a very traditional background. This seemed to make Saskia quite anxious. ‘Well, naturally,’ Julia said. ‘Saskia’s a complete cokehead. She’ll never be able to hold it together. She’ll go for lunch at his ma and pa’s country pile and put on her Tara Palmer-Tomkinson accent and a twinset and pearls and then they’ll catch her snorting dope off their posh loo seat or one of their posh loo seats because I’m sure they have more than one.’ Tilly had trouble following Julia sometimes. She didn’t know if it was her poor shrinking brain, or just Julia.

She sighed and put her specs back on and returned to reading the script. What did they mean when they said Marjorie Collier ‘fought Hitler’? She was supposed to be sixty-eight – not exactly old unless you were a pre-pubescent script editor only interested in bringing in a younger audience. Joanna Lumley was in her mid-sixties, for heaven’s sake, no one expected her to wear carpet slippers and knit in front of the fire. Tilly had met her at a charity do. ‘Come with me,’ Phoebe had said, ‘I need you there.’ Phoebe was rickety, she’d had her knees replaced, her hips replaced, she’d even had her thumb joints replaced. They were talking about her shoulders next. Tilly had no idea they could replace shoulders. Shame they couldn’t replace her heart. Still, Joanna Lumley was very nice, although the seafood canapés had given Tilly a gippy tummy for days. Funny word, ‘gippy’, came from ‘Egyptian’, didn’t it, was it racist? Better be careful not to say it in front of Paddy what’s-her name.

(Close-up on Marjorie’s face.)
                            (
Whispers
.) Vince. My boy. (
She dies
.)

Honestly, what a lot of rot. She’d have to stretch out her death scene as long as possible. She wasn’t going that quickly. Put some real feeling into it so that a few tears would be shed at her passing.

She thought she’d better get on with running her lines but she had hardly got past the first one before she fell asleep. Some time later Saskia must have come in and removed her specs and turned off the light because when she woke up in the middle of the night, after the usual hectic dreams, it was dark and she couldn’t see anything. A little rehearsal for the real thing.

Four o’clock in the morning, if the old clock radio on the bedside table was correct. The dead time. Something had woken him, but he didn’t know what. The dog was awake as well.

Jackson slipped out of bed and padded across the dark room to the little attic window. He looked down into the deserted yard below and, beyond, into a narrow lane that ran behind the yard. Not much of a
bella vista
. Someone was lurking in the lane, a bulky figure dressed in the clothes of darkness. The creature detached itself from the shadows and slouched off down the street, too far away for Jackson to get a clear view of its features.

Common sense dictated that he should leave it alone. Leave it alone and climb back into a warm bed and go for a harmless adventure in the Land of Nod, rather than throwing on his clothes and climbing out of the window on to the fire escape in order to participate in a nightmare in the land of the living.

‘
Allez oup!
’ he said to the dog. The dog cocked its head to one side and gave him a quizzical look. Jackson demonstrated by climbing back in through the window and then climbing back out again. After a second’s hesitation, in which Jackson felt he was being assessed for trustworthiness, it jumped neatly out on to the fire escape and, shepherded by Jackson, scrabbled down the metal steps.

Jackson unlatched the yard gate with exaggerated delicacy. He didn’t want to incur the wrath of his hostess for the night by waking her from her beauty sleep. She needed all she could get.

When he stepped into the lane it was deserted. He thought of his mutinous hitchhiker and her handy Maglite-in-a-bag combo and wished he had something similar on his person. His Swiss Army knife was the nearest thing he had to a weapon and that was in his rucksack in his room.

He walked the length of the lane and came out on to another street of houses identical to Bella Vista. The dog stuck cautiously to his side, apparently not enjoying their escapade.

A figure sprang up ahead. Ill met by moonlight. One of the Land Cruiser guys. By their jackets shall ye know them. The hairs on Jackson’s scruff rose and he spun round to see what was behind him. Yep, they came as a pair, leather jackets, leather gloves, big leather boots, Jackson the filling in the cow sandwich. The one behind flexed his knuckles, an action that reminded Jackson of Marilyn Nettles’s cat trying to put the frighteners on him.

The dog’s hackles rose and it growled, a surprisingly threatening sound coming from something so small. Yeah, Jackson thought, come on then, take me on, me and my tiny dog, we’re ready for you. He positioned himself on the pavement so that he could see both of the Land Cruiser guys at once. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

‘We were just coming up to see you,’ one of them said. ‘Nice room, is it? Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.’ He sounded disconcertingly like Jackson’s brother, same rough accent, same cynical undertone. Jackson’s own accent had been sanded down over the years and he wondered sometimes if he would have recognized his younger self if he heard him now.

‘Who
are
you?’ Jackson said. ‘And what do you want? Have you come here just to beat me up – for no discernible reason that I can see – or what?’

‘The what. We came for the what bit,’ the other one said. ‘But we’ll probably do the beating-up bit as well.’ Jokers, always the worst types.

‘Gentlemen, I think we’re at cross-purposes here,’ Jackson said. ‘You’re looking for that woman, the one you were after at the garage. I don’t know where she is.’

‘Do you think we’re stupid?’ the one who sounded like his brother said.

‘Well . . .’

‘It’s you we’re after.’

‘Me? What did I do?’

‘You’ve been sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong,’ Tweedledee said. ‘Asking questions all over the place.’

‘Someone’s got a message for you,’ Tweedledum said.

‘What, you’re a greeting cards firm now?’ Jackson said. Some people might think that when the odds seem stacked against you it’s a good idea to simply walk away rather than poke the enemy in the face with a big stick. Jackson got his big stick out and poked. ‘Don’t tell me, you’re a strippergram,’ he said to Tweedledum, who bent his knees, ready for battle. Tweedledee did his knuckle-flexing thing again. Cry havoc, Jackson thought.

Tweedledum suddenly launched himself at Jackson, barrelling into him at full tilt, knocking him like a top, and before he could even respond to this sudden joust, Tweedledee punched him hard on the side of his head. Jackson reeled round but at least he managed to land a punch on Tweedledum’s nose. ‘Touché,’ he managed to say before Tweedledee started pummelling him in the stomach.

Jackson found himself on the ground, all he could hear was the dog barking furiously. He wanted to tell it to stop before it got hurt, these guys probably wouldn’t think twice about kicking it into touch.

Then the one who sounded like his dead brother spoke, startlingly close to his ear. ‘The message, you southern smart-arse, is to leave Carol Braithwaite alone. And if you don’t, then this is just going to keep on happening.’ Jackson wanted to protest, worse than being punched to the ground was the idea that the confrères of his native county couldn’t recognize him as one of their own. Unfortunately, before he could say anything one of those confrères kicked him in the head and darkness fell for a second time that night for Jackson.

Toowit-toowoo
. Not really. It was more like
kewick . . . oo-oo
. A female calling, a male answering. Very territorial birds, owls. Tracy only knew that because there was a book about British birds on the bookshelf. ‘Holiday cottage’ was a bit of a misnomer, the place was huge, she seemed to have overlooked that when she was booking it. ‘Designed by Burges’ it said, as was the church a couple of hundred yards away. Victorian Gothic. The house was in the middle of a medieval deer park. Extraordinary.