The Ladykiller (4 page)

‘’Course you can, guv. We take everything here. Even American Express. Just as long as you have some other form of identification, we’re cooking with gas.’

The man smiled and George smiled back. He felt as if he had found a true friend.

‘If I was to give you a ring every now and then to see what was in stock, so to speak . . .’

The man patted his shoulder.

‘’Course you can, my old cocker. I’ll save you anything a bit near the mark. How’s that?’ The man knew a policeman from thirty paces and was patting himself on the back. This bloke was a right prat.

‘Oh, thank you so much. Where I live . . .’ He spread his hands helplessly.

‘I know what you mean. People don’t understand us real men, do they?’

The shopkeeper was busy taking the credit card from George before he had time to change his mind.

‘No, they don’t.’

He left ten minutes later, with his mask and his new film, both in a plain brown carrier bag clutched in his sweaty hand.

Looking around him at the faces and sounds of Soho, George Markham felt as if he had finally come home.

When Elaine opened the front door after her day at work, George had the dinner on and a pot of tea waiting for her.

‘Sit yourself down, my love, you must be tired out. I’ve made us a nice bit of steak and chips.’

Elaine stared at her husband as if she had never seen him before. He seemed almost happy.

‘Thank you, George. I must say I’m glad you bothered to cook. I didn’t feel like it one bit.’

He chucked her under the chin as he placed a cup of steaming tea in front of her.

‘For you, my precious, anything!’

He grinned at her, and Elaine grinned back.

There was definitely something odd here. The last time George had chucked her under the chin had been over twenty years ago, when they had still been happy. She sipped her tea and tried to shake off her suspicions. That had been before they’d had to move. Before everything had started going wrong.

Elaine drank her tea, watching George as he cooked.

She shook her head. There was no doubt about it: he was happy.

But why?

Chapter Two

George sat at his desk, blind to the ledgers in front of him. All he could see was the movie that he had purchased from the sex shop in Soho. Ever since he had watched it, he’d had a sense of unreality. Sometimes it frightened him, like the night before when he had been sitting with Elaine watching a programme about Giant Pandas. He had sat, sipping his tea, watching the film - and then he had just gone. Gone away in his mind to the other film. He was
in
the other film. He was the star. He was in complete control.

He had been brought back to reality by Elaine’s voice. It could crack glass and sour milk, all in one fell swoop. But his aberration had scared him. Because lately he could not control his thoughts at all. They ran away with him any time of the day or night.

He shook himself mentally and told himself to get on with the job in hand. He stared once more at the sales ledger in front of him.

‘Mr Markham, have you five minutes to spare?’

The voice of Josephine Denham broke into his thoughts. He turned in his seat to see her standing in the doorway, smiling at him.

‘Of course, Mrs Denham.’ His voice was soft and polite.

Josephine Denham turned and walked back to her office. George Markham gave her the creeps and she did not know why. He was always polite. Chillingly polite. He never took days off for no reason, he always kept himself to himself, never took long lunches or tried to engage her in banter, like some of the other male employees. All in all he was a model worker. Yet she had to admit to herself there was something about his soft, pudgy body and watery grey eyes that gave her the willies. She sat at her desk and observed the little man in front of her.

‘Please, take a seat.’

She watched George take the material of his trousers between his thumb and forefinger and pull it up before sitting down. Even this action irritated her. She saw his funny little smile, that just showed his teeth, and felt even more annoyed. George on the other hand was surreptitiously looking at Josephine’s enormous breasts. He could see the rise and fall of every breath she took.

As far as he was concerned, Josephine Denham had a chest of Olympian standards.

She saw his smile widen, and forced herself to grin back.

‘I am sorry to have to call you in, George. You’ve always been a good worker . . .’

He was more alert now. The smile had gone.

‘I’m afraid that in these difficult times . . . with the recession . . . well, we’re going to have to let some of the staff go. You will be paid redundancy money, of course.’

George felt as if someone had burst his own private bubble of happiness.

‘I see.’ But he didn’t see. He didn’t see at all. He had been with this firm for fifteen years.

‘How many will be going?’

Josephine Denham took a deep breath. He may as well know now as later.

‘Five. Johnson, Mathers, Davids and Pelham. Not forgetting your good self, of course.’

George stared at her. His expressionless face seemed to be drinking her in. She shuddered.

‘I see.’ So all the older men were to go. The young so-called dynamos were all staying. George felt an urge to leap from his chair and slap the supercilious bitch with her painted face, her dyed blond hair, her fat, wobbling breasts. The dirty stinking slut! The dirty whore! He hoped she died screaming of cancer. He hoped they sliced her breasts inch by inch. He hoped . . .

‘Are you all right, Mr Markham?’ Josephine Denham was nervous. He had sat staring at her for over five minutes. No expression on his face, nothing. He knew and she knew that he was finished. No other firm would take him at fifty-one. He just did not have what it took. He had no charisma, no personality. George Markham had nothing going for him at all.

‘I really am dreadfully sorry, George.’ She said his name timidly. Unsure of herself.

He looked at her before turning towards the door. ‘You will be.’

His voice was muffled and Josephine could not hear him. ‘Sorry, I didn’t quite . . .’

George turned to face her and smiled again.

‘I said, you will be.’

Was he being sarcastic? She watched as he shuffled from her office, his shoulders even more rounded and dejected-looking than when he had come in.

She breathed a sigh of relief. At least she had got that out of the way.

She picked up her cigarettes and lit one. For some unknown reason she was shaking. She grinned to herself. Imagine being nervous of a little runt like George Markham!

But her uneasiness stayed with her all day.

George went back to his desk and sat silent and still until lunchtime. His mind was whirling underneath his calm exterior. He got into the little pub, the Fox Revived, at five past twelve and ordered himself a large brandy.

The barmaid was about forty-five with long bleached blond hair and enormous false eyelashes. Her tiny, empty breasts were visible through her cheesecloth top. George looked at her in disgust.

Another slut. They were all fucking sluts. He put his hand to his mouth, shocked at even thinking such a word.

‘That’ll be one pound ninety, please.’ The barmaid’s voice had a nasal twang as she tried to speak in a refined manner.

‘Thank you very much, dear. Please have one yourself.’

She answered his tiny smile with a wide one of her own, showing big tobacco-stained teeth.

George handed her the five-pound note and waited for his change. Then, taking his drink, he went to a small corner table and sipped his brandy.

Elaine would go stark staring mad when he told her. It would be another thing to hold against him. Oh, Elaine was good at collecting grudges. She collected grudges like other women collected hats or shoes. She still hadn’t forgiven him for that other business. She never mentioned it, oh no, but he knew that it was there between them, like a silent ghost. He took a gulp of his drink, the rawness of the cheap brandy burning his throat.

It was not his fault. He had hardly known what was happening. One minute they had been smiling and laughing and the next the girl had been screaming. Oh, that scream! It had gone right through his skull and into his brain. The silly little bitch. Surely she had known what was going to happen?

‘Hello there, Georgie boy!’

Peter Renshaw stood in front of him, positively beaming with good humour and camaraderie. George felt his heart sink to his boots. This was all he needed, that bloody numbskull Renshaw twittering on.

‘Hello, Peter. Can I get you a drink?’

‘No. It’s my shout, Georgie. Not every day I see you in my little love nest!’

George watched him click his fingers at the blonde monstrosity behind the bar and wink at her.

‘Vivienne, my cherub. Bring me a G and T with ice and a slice, and whatever my good friend here is drinking. Oh, and not forgetting one for your lovely self.’

George watched the woman preening as she smiled her assent. Peter sat down beside George and whispered: ‘She’s been round the turf a few times, but she can warm a man’s cockles when the fancy takes her.’

George wrinkled his nose in disgust and Peter laughed.

‘Listen, Georgie boy, a bit of advice, man to man.’ He nudged George in the ribs. ‘You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire. Know what I mean?’

George smiled for lack of anything else to do. He wished that Renshaw would have a massive heart attack and die if that was what it took to keep him quiet.

‘If you say so, Peter.’

‘Pete! Pete, for God’s sake, Georgie boy. No one calls me Peter, not even my old mum, God bless her.’

Vivienne brought their drinks to the table and George saw her tickle Peter’s neck with her fingers as she walked away. Bloody dirty filthy slag!

‘What you staring at, Georgie? Fancy a quick bonk with her, do you?’ Leaning back in his seat, Peter went to call the woman back.

George, mortified at what Peter meant to do, dragged the man’s head round by grabbing the collar of his sheepskin coat.

‘NO! Peter . . . I mean, Pete.’ He calmed his voice. ‘I was just thinking, that’s all. I had a bit of bad news today.’

‘So they told you then?’

George looked at him, perplexed.

‘Told me what?’ Peter could not detect the edge to George’s voice.

‘That they was “outing” you. It’s been common knowledge for months.’

George was dumbstruck. So everyone knew? Everyone but him. Everyone had been looking at him and laughing at him. Oh, yes, laughing at him. Laughing up their bloody sleeves at him!

Peter watched the amazed expression on George’s face turn to one of virulent anger. It shocked even him. He’d thought that George had known. Everyone else had. Sorry now, he put his hand on George’s arm.

‘Hey, I’m sorry, old man. Christ, I thought you knew. I really thought you knew.’

George took a deep breath.

‘No, Pete. I didn’t know. I really didn’t.’

George’s voice was his own once more. Quiet and polite. ‘I never even guessed.’

‘Come on, Georgie boy. Best thing that could happen really. I mean, what are you - fifty-eight? Fifty-nine?’

‘I’m fifty-one, Peter. Fifty-one.’

‘Oh. Well, never mind anyway. Get an early pension. Live a little. See the kids.’

‘I have no children, Peter. Elaine and I never . . .’

‘Oh.’

Peter was finding it increasingly difficult to find things to say. He himself had a wife, four children and a string of mistresses and one-night stands the length and breadth of the country. People like George amazed and intrigued him. How could you live fifty-one years and have nothing to look forward to? He saw himself in years to come, when he was a bit long in the tooth for affairs and fumbling encounters, living with his wife and watching his grandchildren grow up. With hundreds of happy memories to see him through the twilight years.

‘Come on, Georgie boy, drink up. Think of the great leaving do we’ll have for you! There, that’ll cheer you up.’ He snapped his fingers at the barmaid again. ‘Another round here, Viv, if you please.’

The pub was beginning to fill up and George watched Peter greet friends and acquaintances. He nodded hello at different introductions and all the time his mind was in a turmoil.

What the hell was Elaine going to say?

Elaine sat in the canteen at work and stirred her coffee listlessly.

George was not right, yet she had to admit he had been a lot better to live with these last few weeks. He had been lighthearted. Like before all the trouble.

She pushed the unpleasant thoughts from her mind. George had paid his debt to society. He had a clean slate. They had built themselves a new life of sorts. After twenty years, maybe it was time to let go of the past.

‘Oh, Elaine, I hate Fridays, don’t you?’

Margaret Forrester sat down at Elaine’s table and slipped off her shoes.

‘My feet will end up in the
Guinness Book Of Records
one of these days. The most swollen feet in the world.’

Elaine laughed at her friend.

‘Why do you insist on wearing those heels? Get yourself a pair of comfortable flats.’

‘No. My legs are me only vanity. I won’t let them go till I have to.’

Elaine shook her head. ‘Shall I get you a coffee?’

‘Oh, yes please, Elaine. And a bowl of cold water if they’ve got one.’

Elaine got her friend a coffee and they sat together chatting.

‘So where you off to on holiday then?’

Elaine shrugged.

‘Probably Bournemouth again.’

‘Oh, sod off, Elaine. No one goes to Bournemouth these days unless they go in a wheelchair. Why don’t you come to Spain with me and the girls? Sun, sand, sea, sex . . .’

Margaret did a little dance in her chair.

‘I can’t wait to get there! Last year we was in this hotel, right on the seafront, and next door was only a bloody parrot sanctuary. All bloody night the sodding things screeched. And you know Caroline from frozen foods? She threw all our shoes at them one night. Pissed out of our heads we was. We had to go and ask for them back the next day. It was a scream!’