Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

Brian shrugged behind the glass. ‘I never sat with them,’ he said. ‘They played Gin Rummy for hours in the backroom. Good company, my mam said she was. A good listener.’

‘She was always in and out of your house, Harold.’ Sheila clicked open her purse and put a pound note in front of Clive.

‘She was? I never saw her.’

‘Probably keeping Dorothy company,’ she said, ‘while you were out and about.’

Brian went to put a tower of coins on the note, but Sheila brushed him away.

‘Dorothy saw Margaret Creasy going into number eleven,’ said Harold. ‘She’s just as hysterical about it as John is. She thinks someone’s said something.’

Clive pulled the empty glasses together, catching each one with a finger. ‘What is there to say? The police said the fire was an accident.’

‘You know Dorothy,’ said Harold, ‘she’ll tell anybody anything, she doesn’t know what she’s saying half of the time.’

The glasses rattled as they left the table.

‘As long as the police don’t change their minds and start digging everything up again.’ For once, Sheila’s voice was low. She still held on to the purse, and Brian watched her click at the clasp. Her hands were rough from the heat, and the polish on her nails crept away from the edges in ragged lines.

‘For Christ’s sake, Sheila, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.’ There was no one else in the bar. Even the old men had left. Still Harold scanned a room of empty chairs behind him, then turned back and edged himself nearer the table. ‘Stop scaremongering. We agreed back then that we just made our feelings known, that’s all. The rest of it was chance.’

Brian leaned back in his chair. He could feel the edge of the cigarette machine biting into his shoulder. ‘She talked to everyone, though, didn’t she? She went round the whole avenue. You don’t know what she found out. She was smart, Mrs Creasy. Really smart.’

Sheila pushed her purse back into her handbag. ‘I hate to bloody say it, but Brian’s right. Perhaps she knew more than any of us.’

‘It was an accident,’ said Eric Lamb. He stretched the words out, like instructions.

Now his glass was gone, Brian didn’t know what to do with his hands. He pressed his thumb into the drips of beer on the table, pulling them into lines, trying to make a pattern. This was the problem when people had known you since you were a child, they could never quite let go of assuming you needed to be told what to think.

‘We just need to stay calm,’ said Harold. ‘None of this loose talk. We did nothing wrong, understood?’

Brian shrugged his shoulders, and his jacket creaked and crackled in reply. Probably wasn’t leather after all.

*

They walked back through the estate, Sheila linking her arm through Brian’s to steady herself, because her shoes were bloody impossible to walk in. Brian didn’t think her shoes were the problem, but he offered her his arm anyway. It was almost ten. Eric Lamb had gone on ahead, and they’d left Harold at the Legion, helping Clive to close up. It was the best part of the day, Brian thought. The heat had faded into a heavy silence, and there was even a pale breeze, pushing into the quietness and tracing a path through the highest leaves.

As they reached the garages at the end of the avenue, Sheila stopped to pull at the strap on her shoe, and she wavered and swayed, and leaned into Brian to keep her balance. ‘Bloody things,’ she said.

He stared at the road. Light escaped from the sky and pressed against the horizon, taking the familiar and the safe along with it. In the dusk, the houses looked different, exposed somehow, as though they had been stripped of their disguise. They faced each other, like adversaries, and right at the top, set back from the rest, was number eleven.

Still, silent, waiting.

Sheila looked up and followed his gaze. ‘Makes no sense, does it?’ she said. ‘Why would you stay when you know you’re not wanted?’

Brian shrugged. ‘Perhaps he feels the same about us. Perhaps he’s waiting for an apology.’

Sheila laughed. It was thin and angry. ‘He’ll wait a bloody long time for mine.’

‘But do you really think he did it? Do you really think he took the baby?’

She stared at him. Her whole face seemed to narrow and tighten, until the whites of her eyes were lost to hatred. ‘He’s the type, isn’t he? You’ve only got to look at him. You’re not that thick, Brian.’

He felt colour wash across his face. He was glad she wouldn’t notice.

‘Strange Walter,’ he said.

‘Exactly. Even the kids can see it.’

He glanced at the lights in Sheila’s window. ‘Who’s sitting with yours?’ he said.

She smiled. ‘They don’t need no sitter. Our Lisa’s old enough now. She’s sharp, just like her mother. I trained her well.’

He looked over at number eleven again. It was becoming lost to the light, the edge of the roof slipping into an inky black. ‘It’s what kids do, though, isn’t it?’ he said, ‘Copy their mams and dads?’

Sheila’s shoes dragged on the pavement, pulling at the concrete with their heels. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And don’t you go feeling sorry for Walter Bishop. People like that don’t deserve sympathy. They’re not like us.’

The rattle of the latch reached across an empty road.

‘Do you really think the police will be interested in the fire?’ he said. ‘After all this time?’

She turned in the half-light. He couldn’t see her face, just an outline. A shadow slipping and shifting against the darkening bricks. When she answered, it was a whisper, but he heard it creep across the silence.

‘We’d better bloody hope not,’ she said.

And her shoes scraped against the step, and a key twisted in a lock, and Brian watched as the last piece of daylight was stolen from the sky.

He crossed over, towards home, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He thought he’d imagined it at first, but then he felt it again, cardboard rubbing against his knuckles. He stopped and pulled at the ripped lining until it broke free.

A library ticket.

He stood underneath the street lamp, and the name on the ticket was caught in liquid, orange light.

Mrs Margaret Creasy.

He frowned and folded it in half, and he pushed it back against the lining, until it finally disappeared.

*

Brian stood in the doorway and looked into the sitting room. The giant cave of his mother’s sleeping mouth looked back at him, and it made the rest of her face seem strangely trivial. The Milk Tray was disembowelled on the footstool, and the debris of her evening decorated the carpet – knitting needles and crossword puzzles and television pages torn from a newspaper.

‘Mam?’ he said. Not loud enough to wake her, but loud enough to reassure himself that he’d tried.

She snored back to him. Not the violent, churning snore that you would expect, but something softer. A thoughtful snore. His father once said that his mother was delicate and graceful when they first met, and Brian wondered if her snoring was all that was left of that narrow, fragile woman.

He stared at his mother’s mouth. He wondered how many words had fallen out of it and into Margaret Creasy’s ears. She couldn’t help herself. It was as though she used hearsay as a web to trap people’s attention, that she didn’t believe she was interesting enough to hold on to them any other way.

His mother’s mouth widened a little more, her eyes squeezed a little more tightly, and from somewhere deep in her chest came the faint rasp of unconsciousness.

Brian wondered if she’d told Margaret Creasy about the night of the fire. About what she saw, or thought she saw, in the shadowed corners of the avenue.