He laughed again. “Jessie-Pleasie!” Then he took a last look round the van and headed towards the black square where the door stood open onto the night.
“Hang on,” I told him. I was 85 percent sure this was okay. “You can come back to the house.” It took a bit of miming, but he got it eventually. Started shaking his head as soon as he understood what I was trying to say.
“No way,” he said. “No tell Gus King. No way, José.”
“Why not?” I said.
And he treated me to another long splurge of slow, loud Polish that might as well have been whale song. But I had another plan anyway.
“Wait here then. Ten minutes.” I held up both my hands. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Any problems?” said Gizzy. She was at her desk in the office, and it might have been my imagination, but it looked like her desk lamp was turned so the light hit the water metre square on. She’d have seen that I hadn’t been tempted then.
“No, fine,” I replied. “Do I chuck these cloths now or wash them?” One look at her face told me all. “I’ll just rinse them then.” I planned what to say while I stood at the sink, wiping the bucket, squeezing the cloths. “It’s lovely here,” I said when I returned. “I suppose you’re full up for half-term next week, though?”
“All but one,” she said. “How?”
“My friend from work was talking about getting away with her grandkids. Not far, just a break. A view of the sea, she said.”
Gizzy was clicking through screens on her laptop. She spoke absentmindedly. “Sea views are the first to go,” she said. “The one that’s left’s a woodland setting.” There were a few trees up the back near Moormist right enough, but a woodland setting was stretching it.
“Is it you who thinks up the names?” I said. “That’s lovely: woodland setting.”
She looked over the tops of her specs. “That’s not the name of the van. The van’s called Foxleap. You should have been checking the list by name. Oh my God, I might have known it was too good to be true, you waltzing in just when I… ”
“Aye, aye,” I said. “Sundown, Cliffview, Moormist, I know. So I’ll see you tomorrow, eh? I’ll just head off home then.” I scuttled away before she could tell me to leave the master key.
He was right where I’d left him, waiting huddled in his shrunk jacket, still holding his Bible and rosary. He followed me as I crept about with my torch, peering at the van signs, trying to stay on the quiet velvety grass and keep off the gravel where our footsteps crunched loud enough to drown out the sound of the sea. Foxleap, when we finally found it, was nicely tucked away-I suppose that’s why it was empty-and I was pretty sure no one heard me turn the key and ease the door open. Inside, it was the usual monument to beige, but Kazek looked around it like he’d just checked into the Ritz. Then he turned to me and spoke really slow and quite loud, as if maybe I’d understand Polish if I just would give it a go. He raised the Bible and waved it in my face, holding it so tight that it bent into a curve, trying so hard to tell me something he wanted so much for me to know.
“Wasting your time with me, pal,” I said. “I’ve had it shoved so far down my throat I could shit it. Didn’t work then, won’t work now.”
“English,” he said. “I try. Jaroslawa no leave me. Never. No way. Wojtek no leave me. Never no way.”
“Who?” I said.
Kazek opened the Bible at the front cover and showed me the two words printed there. Wozciech Zajac.
“Gone,” he said. “Bad man. Frighten.”
I looked at the words and back at his face.
“Let me get this right,” I said. I pointed to the Bible and then to Kazek, raising my eyebrows. He shook his head, pulling faces. Then he did a mime that that would have made my mother drop dead if she’d seen him. He put his hands out to the sides and let his head loll, pretty good crucifixion pose, then he rolled his eyes and blew a raspberry. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He jabbed his finger at the two words and then held his hands together in prayer.
“Right,” I said. “This is somebody else’s? That’s his name written there? Wozzy… ”
“Wojtek.”
“Got it. Where is he?”
“Gone,” said Kazek. “Bad man.” Then he gave up and broke into Polish again.
“But you kissed it,” I said. “I’m confused.”
“Confused,” said Kazek. “No shit, Jessie-Pleasie.” I laughed again. He was weird, filthy, stank like a dead dog, had scared me badly twice, and was probably going to lose me my job in the next day or so-but I liked him. Even when nothing made any sense at all, I felt like I knew where I was with him.
“So, Ros?” I said. “Jaroslawa? And you?” I made a kissy noise and fluttered my eyes.
“No!” said Kazek. “No way. Friend, jess? Friends.”
“So tell me this then.” I took the photo of Ros and Becky back out of the Bible. “Ros and Becky?” More kissy noises.
He raised his eyebrows, thinking about it, then shrugged. “Nie wiem,” he said. “Maybe. She is dead? Dead, Becky, jess?”
“She is,” I said. “She killed herself. Ros went away and Becky killed herself. And now you need to move on, right? Find a new place. You can have a couple of nights here, but then you have to go.”
He shook his head. “No way Jaroslawa leave me. Friend, Jessie-Pleasie. No way.”
“Why are you talking like Tarzan and Jane?” said Gus. It was gone nine by the time I got home. Home! Back to the cottage, finding him in the kitchen, polishing shoes, newspaper spread all over the table. Paolo Nutini on the Fisher Price tape deck. I’d said: “Hiya. Missed you. Tea? Hungry?” Now I laughed.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said to him. “I will speak in whole sentences from now on, like I’m sitting an oral English exam.”
“Aye, whole sentences of total mince,” he said. “How’d it go?”
Obviously the thing to mention was finding the Bible and meeting the crazy guy, sneaking him into an empty van, and lying to my boss. That was the headline news of my first day. But I couldn’t forget the definite sound in Kazek’s voice. No tell Gus King. No way. And I couldn’t imagine how Gus would take it, anyway. Would it be like the bathroom bin? Like the baby monitor? One more way to piss him off and have him tell me I hadn’t and change the subject and play the Becky card until I couldn’t tell up from down? I shook myself. Where the hell had all that come from? What I meant was I was probably going to piss him off anyway when I started in on Ros and Becky, so why piss him off for no reason too.
Instead, I told him about Gizzy and the water-free cleaning, about the woodland setting and the warm hospitality and he listened and smiled, still working away at Dillon’s shoes with a toothbrush, cleaning right into the stitching.
“Sorry,” I said, in the end. “You must have heard this before. From Ros, I mean. Or passed on from Becky.”
He kept on scrubbing, but his smile fell away. “Ros didn’t hang out with me,” he said. “And Becky didn’t tell me anything. I was a spare leg with that pair, Jess.”
Which was a brilliant opener to what I wanted to say. The kettle was nearly boiling, and I took the chance to steel myself, have a quiet pep talk, plan how to deal with him going bananas if it turned that way.
“This is just a thought,” I said. “It wasn’t even mine. It was Steve at work.” He looked up. “Is there any chance that Becky and Ros were more than just friends?” The red started under his sweatshirt collar and climbed his neck in splotches. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from it. “Cos,” I went on, “I know things weren’t great between you and that might explain why Ros would take off-a breakup, you now-and that might explain why Becky could get so bothered about her leaving too. And maybe the reason she… ran around-sorry; that’s not a very nice thing to say-was because she didn’t want to think she was what she was, and maybe the reason she didn’t take the pill or whatever was like some kind of denial too? And Steve even said that she might have had trouble with the idea of babies and it might explain the depression.”