Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“Yes.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be home for dinner.”

She looked up, then went back to her job. “We’re just glad you could be here at all.”

Webster wondered how he was going to say the things he needed to say.

“Did you eat with them?” he said at last.

“I didn’t know when you’d be back.”

The fridge was more or less empty: some rashers of bacon, children’s yogurts, ends of cheese. Even though he hadn’t eaten since that morning, he realized, he had no appetite.

“Do you want a drink?” he said.

“Not till they’re in bed.”

He found himself a glass and reaching up to the high shelf, took down a bottle of whisky, wincing at the pain in his side.

“You have one, though,” said Elsa as he uncorked it.

“It’s been a long day.”

She didn’t say anything straight away, but ran water over the cloth in her hands and wrung it out tight.

“I thought it was the weekend in Marrakech.”

“Today is. They have the same weekends as us.”

She had turned to him now, her arms crossed. Under the bright kitchen lights she looked tired, too.

“But a good meeting?”

“It wasn’t exactly a meeting.”

“It never is.”

“I was there. I’m not lying to you.”

“I know you were there. That’s the problem. You go to these places and I have no idea what you’re doing. Or what other people are doing to you. Most people who go away, they sit in rooms, they talk, they come back. They get bored. Perhaps they get drunk. Perhaps they get laid. Not you. Look at you. You’re a mess. You bring your shit into our house, Ben. Every day. Every day you might as well come home looking like this. In a stranger’s clothes. With a black eye, frightening the children.”

“They’re not frightened.”

“No? Then why does Nancy want to know why you’re hurt? Perhaps she’s just curious. Perhaps they’re used to you. That’s good. But I’m not. I’m not used to you anymore. I can’t stand it. If you call, you don’t tell me anything. You’re not going to tell me anything now. I know it. Well OK. That’s fine. All I want to hear is that you’ve dealt with it, whatever it is, and that’s it. It’s over.”

Webster hoped that this was their lowest point. There was fury in Elsa’s eyes but what frightened him most was the disappointment he saw there, and the firmness, the resolution. Elsa’s decisions were not undone lightly, and he sensed, with a terror greater than any he had yet known, that she was close to making one that she had long delayed.

But what to tell her? The truth hardly served. If he shared it, she might leave him for his idiocy; if he kept it from her, for his lack of trust.

He took a step toward her, made to put his arms around her. “It’s nearly over.”

“For fuck’s sake.” She pulled away. “What does that mean?” She stood, her hands on her hips, about a yard from him; he had never felt so alien in his own home. He took his drink from the side, moved past her, sat at the kitchen table and drank, the heat of the whisky harsh in his throat.

Trying to make his face as open as possible he looked her in the eye. “It’s been bad. Nasty. But it will be finished. In a week. I have one more thing to do.”

He watched her face for a response but she was distracted.

“Jesus Christ, Ben, what’s that?” she said, pointing.

“What?”

“That. On your leg.”

Looking down he saw an inch or two of purple-gray bruise showing on his thigh, just above the knee.

“Show me.”

With a sigh he pulled up the leg of his shorts.

“My God. Who did it?”

“It was just a fight.”

Elsa shook her head and crouched down to have a better look at it.

“Which you lost, I take it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Is that it?”

Webster nodded and took another large sip of whisky.

“Lift up your shirt,” said Elsa.

He hesitated, frowning at her.

“Go on.”

She moved around the table as he lifted the T-shirt on his right side.

“My God. What did they do?”

Her eyes softened and she gently touched his cheekbone, at the edge of the bruise.

“God, baby. You need to go to hospital.” She fetched her phone from the side and started dialing. “Silke might be free. I’ll drive you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“It’s just a cracked rib.”

“Ben.”

“I don’t need to go.”

She put the phone down and looked up, her eyes shut and her neck tensed in frustration before she turned back to him.

“Because, what, you’re really tough? You’re a big man?” She paused. “They”—stressing the word and pointing toward the sitting room—“would rather you were less big. They don’t care about big. Neither do I.”

“It’s a rib. There’s nothing they can do.”

“It’s one thing being fearless. But this? This is pride. This is conceit.” She held his eye. “I’m calling a taxi. You can go on your own.” She stood up.

“Wait,” he said. “We need to…” He didn’t know how to say it. “I need you to go away for a few days.”

Elsa simply looked at him.

“Start the holiday early.”

She looked down at the floor, shaking her head, unable to say anything.

Webster went on. “The man who did this. We’ve made an arrangement. But I don’t trust him to keep it. I think he will, but I don’t want him coming here.”

“He knows where we live.”

“I have to assume so.”

Elsa sighed. Her eyes were cold. “Tell me,” she said, and her voice was clear and hard, “do you know how bad this is?”

He thought he did. He pictured Rad in their house, opening the door, his hand on the stair rail. He knew what he had sacrificed.

“I do.”

“You’ve brought danger into our house. I can’t have that here, Ben. Don’t tell me you can make it go away because even if you can, that’s not the point. You brought it in. It will never be the same.” She paused. “We’ll go to Cornwall. I can’t be here with you.”

WEBSTER WOKE IN THEspare room the next morning: four hours it had taken for a doctor to see him, a further two to be X-rayed and dismissed with a prescription for painkillers, and by the time he had returned home Elsa’s light would have long been switched off. It was shameful, but that was a relief. He had slept heavily and couldn’t recall his dreams, but he had a sense that they contained deserts, and unreachable oases, and low buildings in the sand.

For an hour after breakfast he helped Elsa pack, filling bags with games and books and films to watch, making a picnic, digging out the wetsuits and the fishing nets for the rock pools. This was what he did before a holiday. Elsa would pack the children’s clothes and her own; he was responsible for fun. Every item sharpened the guilt.

They left at eleven, and as he saw them off, the children waving frenetically in the backseats, he felt as if it was he who was going away, he who was being excluded from the home. All morning Elsa had talked to him only to exchange practical information.

He watched the car reach the end of the street. As it rounded the corner a second car moved out from a parking space a few doors down from the Websters’ house and set off in the same direction. Webster checked his watch and went inside.

At noon, Hammer arrived, in his running things, covered in fresh sweat, his face patchy red from the exertion.

“God. You look worse and worse,” he said merrily as Webster opened the door. “So you’re all on your own?”

Webster nodded, smelling Ike’s sweat as he moved past him into the house.

“You call George?”