Surface Tension - Chapter 19

 

 

I take the phone from my pocket. I’ve trouble pressing the right button. My hands are shaking and I nearly cut the caller off. It's not the cold, it’s McClelland.

It's Bill. Her words rush out splashing all around me. All I hear is the colour of her voice, how it rolls and crashes, ebbs and flows. I’m lost and don’t realise she’s stopped talking.

    “Tony, Tony are you listening?” 

    “What? No. Yes of course. No Bill, no. Sorry.” I take a deep breath. “It's been one of those mornings and I’m not with it after last night.”

    “Well, you can explain that latter,” she says sarcastically. “Where are you?”

My jaw’s aching. It’s an effort to talk. I’m massaging my face, getting ready to speak when she blurts, “Tony, the money's gone.”

    “What?”

    “The money.”

“What?”

“The money Tony, the money. 

“What?”

“It isn't there. The money. It’s not in the locker.”

    My heart misses a beat. Panic. 

    “You sure?”

    “Yes, Tony very, very sure.”

    I round the corner at the top of the drive and see my car. 

Panic subsides. I laugh.

“Did you laugh?”

“It’s OK Bill, I’ve got it.”

    “You’ve got it? What do you mean you’ve got it?”

    “Exactly that, Bill.” Stupid really, but the last hour had knocked a lot of things sideways. “Yeah, I've got it.” I reach the car. I unlock the boot, checking over my shoulder to make sure I've not been followed. I flick the boot open and there's the duffle bag. I prise the top open and make out the wades of money sitting in it. “Yep, it is here Bill. Why the panic?” 

“Panic? Tony!” 

    “Sorry, don’t understand,” I swap the phone to the other ear as I can feel it getting warmer. If mobiles do fry your brain, I’d like mine to be done evenly on each side.

    “The lockers a mess.”

    I slam the boot shut and walk round to the front. “The lockers a mess Bill?” Now it’s my turn to be confused.

    “Did you forget your key or something?”

    “You're being cryptic Bill, I don ‘t understand.” I’m waving my left arm agitatedly, jabbing away with the car key in hand. “I used the key. Look, after night I thought it would be safer away from the club. So I went and got it early this morning.” A woman emerges from a drive a little way round the cul-de-sac. She has a large, fat Labrador by her side. She turns towards me but seeing my theatrics, turns away tugging the dog along with her. 

    “You sure?”

    “Don’t be stupid. Of course I did.  I’ve got the key here in my pocket.” I pat my pockets with my left hand and feel the hard shape of the key. “And the cash’s in the boot of my car.”

    “You could’ve told me Tony.”

    I give a noncommittal kind of grunt, there’s guilt there. “Well I tried to find you last night.” A lie. “And you weren’t about and it was early this morning, so I wasn’t going to call to check, it just seemed a safe thing to do ‘cos of what I found out about McClelland. Anyway... what were you doing at the club?” 

    Bill ignores the question, in quiet, measured tones she says, “Someone else knows. The locker door has been ripped off its hinges. Someone else knows.”

    “Sorry, what…” there's dawning comprehension. I turn to face the house half expecting McClelland or his goon to appear.

    With cold hard deliberation she speaks again: “I went to the gym this morning Tony, given last night just to check.” 

(There’s a fleeting thought, what’s happened? Did she know about the punch? Did she know about Ellen? And that’s intriguing because it’s that one that makes me smart. Or maybe it was her, something had happened to Bill. My reasons for checking on the money were obvious, what were Bill’s?) 

“Tony, I slipped into the men's when no one was looking. It was easy to spot our locker. The door was on the floor and there was tape over it. There was nothing inside. Someone else knows Tony, about the money.” 

There's no doubt in my mind who it would be. 

“And Tony,” pause, “what on earth happened last night?”

    I glance up again. McClelland's not appeared. Something inside says now would be a good time to go. I slide into the driver's seat.     

    “Stuff it Bill,” 

    “What?”

    “Look I don’t want to do this over the phone – where can we meet?”

 

Half an hour latter I’m sitting sipping a mug of coffee. I’m grateful for the warmth trickling down inside, anything against the relentless cold. We’ve agreed to meet in a coffee shop on the opposite side of the centre of town, down from the library. I’ve got a window seat and can see its hallowed portals. The place had been my working life. “Had been”; I catch myself; I'm already talking about it the past tense. Life moves on.

    I look up. Bill's working her way down the hill. She's wearing her great coat, her shoulders hunched up against the cold, her head bowed, pushed down into a red scarf. 

Could this be it then, the moment that we break away, leave this frozen place and start anew? The money's still in the back of the car. I'd thought of bringing it with me, heaved it on to my shoulder, was locking the car when I was beset with the feeling that everyone was watching and knew what was in the sack. What if I dropped it sending notes cascading to the floor? Or worse, a heavy hand on my shoulder, and the stentorian tones of the beak? So, the bag was pushed back, lying hidden under several blankets which spent their time in the back of the car for some reason that I'd long forgotten.

    A couple catch my eye. They are pressed into each other against the cold. They're wearing similar coats, merging into one. Their heads are bent close together sharing intimacies that are exhaled in clouds of frosted breath. I feel a long deep pang lurking in my stomach. Why do we place such value on falling in love? The couple stop in the middle of the square. They un-blend and glance round looking for where to go next. Then they meld back into one and kiss, a long, lingering kiss. With careful grace the kiss declines to its natural end and they part, one becoming two.  Their heads bow once more for one swift embrace, then they go their separate ways slipping slowly from each other’s grasp. Contact’s maintained right to the tip of their fingers. I’ve often wondered why fairy stories stop at the point of ‘I do’. You never see what it's like the day after. Maddy’s right true love, proper love begins the day after.

    Is this Bill and me?

I close my eyes hard, so hard my face scrunches up. I grip the half drunk mug of coffee equally hard and feel its warmth slowly progressing up my fingers and across my palms. I picture Bill by a window, working or something; I can’t see because her back's to me. It's my flat, I recognise the furniture. I move across the floor in that strange limbo way you have when you day dream. I stretch my arms around Bill’s waist, letting my hands rub across her ribbed jumper, feeling the soft woollen fibres and her body tightening at my touch. I gently kiss her neck, tasting and smelling her skin. She turns her head as I raise mine and we kiss and part. And it's not Bill it's Ellen that I am holding.

    I jolt form the reverie almost spilling the coffee down my front. I stare out the window. Bill looks up as she crosses the square; she catches my gaze and smiles. It's as warming as my drink. There's guilt again and a lingering question which I push from my mind. 

She bursts through the door along with a blast of cold air that sends shivers through the whole room. She plunks herself into the chair opposite me, her face glowing. She's still smiling. She surprises me by reaching out and touching my arm:

    “You OK Tony? You don’t look too good.” Her hand moves from my sleeve to the side of mouth where she gently touches the bruising.  I wince as much from the coldness of her touch as the pain that shoots from the wound. Bill backs off apologetically, “Did that hurt, I’m sorry, what happened?”

    “That’s OK,” I lie, “Your hands are cold.”

    She ignores this and starts talking, asking questions; “What happened last night?” “Where did I go?” “Who was the blonde I was talking with?” – so she’d noticed;  “How did I get home?” It comes as a torrent. It takes a moment to realise but the anger that was in her voice when we talked over the phone has gone and though she is looking at me there's a distance in her eyes that suggest she's somewhere else.  

    She's changed tack and is talking about work, filling me in on what the feeling is; James’s panic over Mary and Liz being suspended but they’ll be  re-instated on some kind of probationary basis. I note there’s no reference to me. Bill skips on, the regulars have asked after me and that the local paper had at last stopped calling. 

    Then there's silence. 

    She slurps her coffee and looks round. There's the clatter of crockery from the kitchen, the radio playing in the background suddenly seems louder, there' the scrape of a chair on the floor, which is me. This brings me back to look at Bill. Her black, bobbed hair curves round her face framing it, two small pink discs are growing on her cheeks, her lips are slightly parted showing her teeth beneath. She's lowered her head slightly so that she's looking up at me; her thin black eyebrows are marginally scrunched together leading to faint ridges to ripple across her forehead. She's waiting, watching me. Then she catches my look. At some point the coffee has been refreshed though I have no recollection of this happening.

    “It was the money you wanted to talk about.” But then I don't want to talk about it. There's something else there, something Bill's not being honest about. “Look let’s get out of here. It's too hot. I need to feel a blast of cold air on my face.” I’m already out of my seat moving as I say this. “You’re not expected back at work are you?” Bill gives a non-committal shrug. I take it to mean that she’s OK with this. I've no intention of going back. I’m by the door pulling it open as Bill struggles into her coat. She takes a last gulp from her mug and from the face that she pulls I can see that it was too hot.

    We’re out into the cold, which bites deep and hard. I don’t shrink from it, rather I walk purposefully back towards where I parked the car. The clock on the church tower chimes. We’ve reached lunch. Suddenly there're more people about, heading for sandwiches or dipping into a bar for a lunchtime drink to make the afternoon’s work bearable. Some are on errands, desperately moving both against the cold and the clock so that they complete their tasks within the allotted time. I feel a slip of pity for them. Last week that would've been me caught in the tyrannical eye of the employer, now I couldn't care less.

    Bill appears at my shoulder, “You could've waited, I called. I dropped my bag. Didn’t you hear?” She huffs, breath condensing in the air like a smouldering dragon. 

    We're out of the square now turning down a side street and then cutting across another, annoying a driver as he is about to turn left into the road we're crossing. I'm moving in such a way that brooks no conversation, Bill has to trot to keep up with me.

    “What’s all this about?” uncertainty in her voice.

    “I promised to do something for Liz.”