Chapter TWENTY-ONE
TED, LIKE MY MOTHER WHEN SHE WAS GOING THROUGH HER BAD patches, had an extraordinary capacity for sleep. During the first several weeks of his stay, he was never up when I left for school in the mornings and on several occasions he was still sleeping when I returned. I knew that he was asleep because I could hear his snores echoing through the walls of the spare bedroom, enormous reverberating snorts that sounded like the nonstop revving of a huge, ill-tuned engine. I wouldn’t have minded this so much except that, while Ted was in bed, my mother insisted that my father and I should tiptoe around the house. “Be quiet! Your uncle Ted is sleeping,” she’d say in hissing whispers if I dropped a shoe in the hallway or stumbled on the stairs.
My father crept around his own house like an unwelcome visitor with surprising patience. Indeed, he seemed so pleased to see my mother up and about that he didn’t even mind that we were still left to make our meals now that she was spending all her time on the plans for Mabel’s wedding. Every morning, by the time I made it down to the kitchen, my mother was already there, sitting at the table studying patterns for wedding dresses or sketching diagrams for landscaping the back garden. Within a week of Ted’s arrival, she had also discovered the mobile library as a resource to help her with her plans.
“Such a lovely woman, that librarian is,” she told me after her first visit to the mobile library. “She talks such a lot of sense. I hope you listen to her, Jesse,” she said, wagging her finger at me. “You could benefit from paying attention to someone as intelligent and educated as she is.” She went on to tell me how, after the two of them had discussed at length the declining cultural standards of contemporary Britain, the librarian had been only too happy to put in a request for a crateload of gardening, dressmaking, and recipe books that my mother retrieved the following week. After that, she borrowed additional volumes on a regular basis and spent hours surrounded by unsteady piles of thick hardback books, leafing through copies of Landscape Gardening for Beginners, Turf and Lawn Care, and Beautiful Blushing Brides.
When he wasn’t asleep, Ted spent most of his time in the living room, watching television, smoking, and drinking cup after cup of dark, strong tea. He was almost as indiscriminate in his choice of television viewing as my mother was, and I frequently arrived home to find him staring slack-jawed at Play School or Romper Room. “Fetch us another cuppa, would you, love?” he’d say, waving his empty teacup at me, his eyes focused steadily on the screen. His trips out of the house consisted of runs to the Co-op to buy cigarettes. (I was thrilled at this additional supply of Co-op stamps.) Other than that, he rarely left the house and when he inquired about getting the dole he was delighted to find that, since we lived so far from the dole office in Hull, he wasn’t required to go there after his first appointment and could continue to collect his benefits by signing the card they sent him once a week and returning it in the post.
“By, that’s champion, that is,” he said. “There’s nothing I hate more than standing in them damn queues, having them people at the window treat you like you’re a bit of rubbish, and then ending up with a couple of pounds and some change for your trouble.”
“But won’t they help you get a job, Uncle Ted?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t you worry, love, there’s plenty of time for that.”
While Ted would watch almost anything on television, his favorite program by far was Columbo. He said that when he was in prison he and his fellow inmates never missed an episode. “He’s a bloody riot, that bloke,” he’d say, gesturing toward Peter Falk as he arrested yet another murderer. “To look at him, you’d think he was thick as two short planks, but he’s got it all up here,” he’d add, tapping an index finger to his temple and giving a knowing nod.
My father had never really liked American detective programs. “Bunch of bloody Yank rubbish,” he’d mutter during the episodes of Cannon or Kojak that my mother sometimes watched. Because of this, the first Saturday night he was at our house Ted had to put up quite a battle to watch Columbo, but he managed to persuade my father to at least give it a chance. Much to my surprise, after seeing his first episode my father was hooked. He loved the way the disheveled and rambling detective outsmarted all those wealthy doctors, film stars, and highflying businessmen. “Hah!” my father exclaimed when the villain was caught. “Rich bastard, serves you bloody right!”
Within a month, we’d developed a weekly household ritual to prepare for our viewing of Columbo. Early on Saturday evenings, Ted made an excursion to the Midham Co-op, where he’d buy bottles of beer, lemonade, crisps, and salted peanuts. While he was gone, my mother would cut up little cubes of cheese, spear them with toothpicks, and set them out on a plate. By the time the opening sequence came on to show the murder that Columbo would later solve, all four of us would be perched eagerly around the television set, chomping on salt-and-vinegar crisps. These evenings soon became some of my favorite times, and I imagined that if someone walked by our window and looked inside they’d think we looked like just another happy family gathered together on a Saturday night.
I was not very happy, however, several weeks after Ted came to stay, when Mabel and Frank dropped by a couple of hours before Columbo was due to start. I always liked to see Mabel, of course, but I hated the idea of Frank intruding on our cherished family ritual.
“Oh, so somebody finally decided to let us in,” Frank said when I opened the door. “Thought you were going to leave us out here all bloody night.” I’d been upstairs reading a pilfered book from the mobile librarian’s slush pile and had expected someone else to get the door, but my father and Ted were apparently so involved in their television viewing that they hadn’t wanted to leave the room. My mother was in the kitchen working on something related to the wedding plans, and these days she was so singularly focused that it wouldn’t have surprised me if the knock on the door hadn’t even intruded into her consciousness.
I ignored Frank, looking past him at Mabel, who was bent low, her leg lifted off the ground as she examined the tapered heel of her strappy shoe. “Hello, Auntie Mabel,” I said.
“Hello, darling,” she replied, looking up at me. She lost her balance and staggered forward, almost falling over before making a grab for Frank.
As she steadied herself on his arm, he tried to shake her off. “Watch the bloody jacket, won’t you, Mabel? It’s just back from the cleaners.”
A hurt frown flickered across her face. Then, catching my eyes, she recovered herself and flashed me a tight smile.
“Are you all right, Auntie Mabel?” I asked.
She sighed as she took off both of her shoes and made her way into the house in her stocking feet. “I’m fine, but I think I’ve broken the bleeming heel on this shoe. It’s walking up that path of yours that’s done it.” From the doorway she gestured to the ragged path behind her, its concrete cracked, weeds eagerly pushing upward through those cracks. “That’ll never do. I don’t want my wedding guests falling over and killing themselves. Not exactly an auspicious beginning for a marriage. I suppose I’ll have to mention it to our Evelyn.”
“Come on, Mabel,” Frank said, hands shoved into his trouser pockets, a look of irritation on his face as Mabel continued to examine her broken heel. “It’s just a bloody shoe.”
“I know, but this pair is one of my favorites.” She tossed the shoes to the floor and turned to me. “We’re not disturbing you, are we, darling? We just stopped by on our way home. Frank took me for a drive up to the coast. We thought it’d be nice to get some sea air. We went to Reatton, had some fish-and-chips, and I had a few games of bingo while Frank played the one-armed bandits.”
“Lost a small fortune,” Frank said grimly.
“Oh, Frank, it wasn’t that bad,” Mabel said. “And we had a lovely walk by the cliffs afterward. Though, to tell you the truth, it was a bit of a shock to see them. I haven’t been there in years, and when I was a lass there must have been—oh, I don’t know—two, maybe three hundred yards more land there. There was a stable where they kept the donkeys, and there were quite a few houses overlooking the beach. It’s all gone now. Fallen into the sea.”
“East Yorkshire has the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe,” I said. “I learned that in geography at school.”
Frank rolled his eyes. “Quite a little mine of information, aren’t you?”
“She’s right, Frank,” Mabel said. “I remember hearing something like that when I was at school. And this lad we saw there today—he lives at the caravan site—he was telling me they lost more than thirty feet just last year.”
“He did?”
“Yes, poor little thing,” Mabel said. “He’s living in this caravan—well, more like a barrel on wheels, it is. And it’s not much more than a stone’s throw from the cliff edge. Said he doesn’t know when his dad’s going to get around to moving it.”
“I know him,” I said. “He’s in my year at school. His name’s Malcolm.”
“He seemed like a nice lad. Dead friendly. But you tell him, darling, the rate those cliffs are going, he needs to get his dad to move that caravan they’re living in. Either that or find a flipping decent place to live.” Mabel turned to make her way to the living room.
Frank followed her, and I walked after him. After a moment, he halted and turned, blocking my way. “Bit of a girly boy, isn’t he, that friend of yours?”
“He’s not my friend,” I said. Then, as I looked into Frank’s sneering face, I added, “But Mabel’s right, Malcolm’s a nice person. A lot bloody nicer than you.”
“OH, I’M GLAD YOU’RE HERE,” my mother said as Mabel made her way into the kitchen. “I was just going to phone you. I needed to ask you about the serviettes and the tablecloths. And I want you to take a look at the garden gnomes I’ve decided on.” My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, its surface covered with various catalogs, scraps of fabric, pieces of paper, and several half-drunk cups of tea. The room itself, which had gradually become the center of her wedding operations, was chaotic, with boxes of supplies stacked all over the floor and the counters cluttered with vases, serving plates, and half-finished sewing projects. “I think I like this one the best.” She pointed to glossy pages of the gardening-supply catalog and indicated a chubby plaster gnome in a red hat and a green jacket, a fishing rod in his hands. “What do you think?”
She had already transformed the back garden, planting various shrubs and bushes, laying down turf, and installing a pond and a fountain as her centerpiece. The garden gnomes would provide the finishing touch, and she’d spent the past several days going back and forth about which ones she should order.
“Oh, bleeming heck, Ev,” Mabel said, plunking herself down on one of the chairs next to my mother. “What do I care about flipping garden gnomes? They all look the same to me.” I sat beside her.
“But that’s just it, they don’t. There’s some of them that look downright bloody miserable, and you want cheerful ones for a wedding, don’t you?”
“Maybe Evelyn thinks they’re coming as guests,” Frank said, laughing.
He was lurking in the doorway, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. “Right, Evelyn?”
I shot him an irate glare, wishing I could obliterate him with a look.
My mother ignored him. “Well, I suppose if neither of you is interested I’ll just get the ones I want.” She slammed the catalog closed. “But, like I said, I need to know about the serviettes and tablecloths you want. I’ve seen this lovely pink cotton that I think would look great.”
“Oh, God, Ev,” Mabel said, sinking into her chair and looking sapped. “I don’t know. I suppose it sounds all right to me.”
In recent weeks, I’d gathered the impression that Mabel had begun to regret her decision to let my mother run the wedding. She and Frank were always being summoned to the house by my mother, and they motored more and more frequently between Hull and Midham in the Tuggles delivery van to provide consultation on virtually every decision that needed to be made in the ever more elaborate wedding plans. While my mother could spend hours discussing the merits of carnations over roses in the bride’s bouquet or the various options for marquee rentals, Mabel’s patience seemed to be wearing increasingly thin.
“Oh,” my mother said, apparently disappointed by Mabel’s lack of enthusiasm. “If that’s how you feel, I suppose I’ll go ahead and order the material, then. But, before I forget, I wanted to tell you that I met with the photographer—it’s the bloke that does all the fancy weddings hereabouts. He came over and I looked at his portfolio. He does a lovely job. He’ll take ten years off you in his photos, Mabel.”
“Terrific,” Mabel said dully as she shook a cigarette out of its packet.
“And for the entertainment I was thinking of getting this smashing German oompah band. The Bavarian Swingers. Semiprofessional, they are. They played the summer season at the Bridlington Spa last year. And then for the flowers, well, I’m going to order roses and—”
“Hold on a second, Evelyn,” Frank said, pulling his hands from his pockets and taking several steps into the room. “How much is this lot going to cost?”
Along with Mabel, Frank seemed to be regretting handing the wedding plans over to my mother. Not being well acquainted with my mother’s fanaticism for every project she undertook, he hadn’t understood that renting out the Snug Room in the Snail and Whippet would, in fact, have been a far cheaper option.
“Oh, I don’t know,” my mother said vaguely. “I just told them to send the bills to you.”
“Jesus Christ,” Frank hissed through clenched teeth. Looking askance at my mother and then at Mabel, he let out a defeated sigh. “I hope your Ted has got some beer in tonight,” he said. “I could use a bloody drink.”
“HE’S DEAD GOOD, that Columbo,” my father pronounced as the murderer was hauled off in handcuffs and the episode ended. He was sitting in his armchair, waving a little cube of Cheddar cheese on a toothpick about as he spoke.
“A bloody genius, really,” Frank declared. He sat with Mabel and my mother on the settee, and was sipping from a can of Carling Black Label lager. I’d been lying on my stomach on the newly installed fitted carpet—the final step in my father’s redecoration of the living room—propped up on my elbows. Now that Columbo was over, I’d pulled myself up and shuffled over to the wall, where I sat with my legs out in front me.
“You’re right there, Frank,” Ted said, gesturing toward him with an unlit cigarette. He was slouched in the other armchair, feet planted on the floor, legs spread wide. “All them murderers he catches—well, they think they’ve gone and carried out the perfect crime. But, no matter what, they always end up getting caught.” He struck his lighter with his thumb, put the flame to his cigarette, and took a drag.
Frank leaned toward Ted and pressed his bony face into a thoughtful frown. “So, Ted, tell me this, will you? You think there is such a thing as the perfect crime?”
Mabel groaned. “Do you have to talk to him about this? He’s supposed to be sticking to the straight and narrow.”
“I’m only asking,” Frank protested. “After all, Ted does have more experience in the criminal world than any of us. No offense, Ted.”
“None taken, Frank,” Ted said.
“Anyway, if there is such a thing as the perfect crime,” Mabel said, “it’s not our Ted you should be asking. Clearly, with his record he hasn’t discovered it yet.”
Ted shifted awkwardly in his chair. “Leave off, Mabel, will you?”
“I’ll leave off,” she said, leaning forward to squish the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table with considerable force, “when you start showing some evidence that you’ve changed your ways. Like maybe actually getting your backside out of that chair once in a while and trying to find a job.”
“Leave the lad alone, Mabel,” Frank said. “I’m sure he’s doing his best.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” my father said, looking over at Ted. “I heard they’re taking on new workers on the night shift at that paper factory down by Hull docks. Maybe you should go down there, get yourself an application, Ted?”
“Yes, Uncle Ted,” I said, giving him an encouraging smile. “Why don’t you apply?”
Ted twisted his lips into a skeptical frown and slouched down farther into his chair. “Oh, I don’t know about that—I’m not sure I could adapt to the night shift. I mean, I need my sleep.”
“You can say that again,” Mabel said, snorting.
“You get used to it,” my mother offered. “Sometimes I think I should get a night job myself. Sometimes I can go without sleep for days and days.”
“Yes, well, Evelyn,” Mabel said, patting my mother’s leg the way someone might indulgently pat an uncomprehending child. “I’m not sure that’s good for anybody. Not even you. Everybody needs some sleep.”
My mother shrugged, apparently unconvinced.
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Ted,” my father said. “And in your position you might have to take something less than ideal.” There was an irritated edge to his voice. It made me wonder if he was starting to regret inviting Ted to stay almost as much as Frank and Mabel were regretting letting my mother run their wedding. After being at the office, my father came home every day to continue his repairs on the house. When he did the living room, he had to work around Ted. While my father diligently scraped old wallpaper off the walls, Ted sat on the settee watching television and offering occasional decorating tips. The only help he provided was to assist my father when he needed to move the television, taking it up to his bedroom for several days while my father painted the ceiling and installed the carpet.
“Aye, but the night shift—that’s tough work, is that,” Frank said. “And I don’t mean to imply you’re over the hill, Ted, but you’re not exactly a spring chicken anymore. Working nights is all right when you’re a youngster, but a man in his forties—well, it’s a damn sight harder. I think Ted would be better off with something during the day.”
As I listened, I couldn’t help wondering why Frank was so determined to defend Ted’s blatant idleness. From the moment he’d met him, he seemed eager to get in Ted’s good graces, though why this was so important to him I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t as if Ted was a famous outlaw or a renowned bank robber. He was nothing more than a petty criminal, and he wasn’t even very good at that.
“The way things are these days,” Frank continued, “factories closing, the country going down the bloody drain, it’s hard for anybody to get a job. Even those of us that have a job are barely scraping by. Bloody difficult to make an honest living these days, it is.”
“Been difficult for Ted to make an honest living all his life,” Mabel said, giving a sad, slow shake of her head.
“Well, at least he doesn’t have women spending all his money left, right, and bloody center,” Frank sneered, looking at my mother.
“Oh, come on, Frank, love, don’t be like that,” Mabel said, reaching over to rub his arm. He shrugged her away.
“Maybe you’d be better off staying single and moving back to your bedsit, Frank,” I said. “Maybe you should just do your own washing and learn how to cook. Then you wouldn’t have to put up with women at all.”
“Quite the little joker, isn’t she?” He let out a hollow laugh as he looked around the room.
“It’s not a joke,” I said, pushing myself to my feet.
“Jesse, it isn’t like you to be so bad-tempered, darling,” Mabel said, frowning over at me. “Frank was only having a laugh, love. There’s no need to be so rude.”
I was filled with rage, not at Frank but at Mabel. I saw how Frank treated her, and how Mabel had transformed herself into someone who would tolerate that treatment. Instead of being grateful when I spoke up to defend her from his sour comments, she defended him. For a second, I wanted to tell her to pull herself together, to stand up for herself. I swallowed my words and turned toward the door. “I’m off to bed,” I said as I headed into the hall.
ABOUT HALF AN HOUR after I’d stomped upstairs, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I opened my door, I heard the low growl of male voices in the hallway below. I paused to listen and realized it was Frank and Ted, their voices animated rumblings that they seemed to be trying to keep low but which kept rising in excited little swells. Curious about what they might be discussing so heatedly, I crept along the landing until I reached the top of the stairs. I peered over the banister and saw the two of them almost immediately below me. They stood close together, puffing on cigarettes. I took a soft step back and lowered myself to the floor. Then I pressed my head against the banister, so that I was beyond their view but could look down on their heads, swathed in a misty swirl of smoke.
“See, it’s ruddy foolproof, really, Ted,” Frank was saying. “There’s no chance that anybody would find out.”
“Well … I don’t know, Frank. If our Mabel … Well, she’ll break my bloody neck.”
“Look, you’ve no worries there.” Frank slapped Ted on the shoulder. “She’ll never know, I guarantee it. So, what do you say? Want to give it a try?”
Ted took a long drag on his cigarette. Frank moved restlessly about from foot to foot as he waited for an answer.
“Well,” Ted finally said, “I don’t suppose I’ll get a better offer.”
“You’ll not regret it, Ted,” Frank said, his tone obviously delighted. “Let’s shake on it, shall we?” From above, I watched as they clasped each other’s hands.
“Frank. Frank, what are you up to?” It was Mabel. She stepped out of the living room into the hall. I backed away, farther into the darkness.
“Nothing, love, just having a little chat with Ted here about looking for a job, that’s all.”
“Aye,” said Ted. “He’s been ever so helpful, has Frank.”
“That’s good,” Mabel said, yawning. “Terrific. And God knows you could use some advice. Now, come on, Frank, I think it’s time for us to go. Evelyn’s been talking my ear off about flipping wedding china, and Mike’s fallen asleep in his chair.” With that, the three of them drifted back to the living room. I sat there for a while, leaning against the banister, feeling even more uneasy about Ted and Frank’s blossoming friendship.