Asa had his tights pulled over his face already, but the material was nearly transparent and hardly disguised him.
“I can see your face,” said Arthur. “I said I can still make out your bloody face, Asa.”
Asa squinted. “How’s that?”
“How should I know?”
“Put yours on so I can see.”
Arthur did.
“What denier are they?”
“Denier?”
Arthur still had the tights’ cardboard sheath. He drew it from his pocket, handed it to Asa and followed his friend’s chipped fingernail down the item’s description. Denier 10, it read.
Asa stared. “You’ve bought the sheer ones.”
“Have I?”
“Arthur!”
“All right—”
“Fucking idiot.”
“I’ll sort it, Scanny. Calm down.”
Arthur yanked the waist lip of his own tights until it stretched to his breastplate, then doubled the fabric up over his face. Next he yanked the bunny ears of the legs, wrapped them around his head and tied them in a knot under his nose. The elasticated waist rested on his top lip, only half his face covered, mouth free. “Job’s a goodun,” he said.
Asa said nothing.
The two men peered at the greenish building. Asa seemed to have calmed a little, but Arthur was still worried. For a tried and tested yes man, Asa had taken a good deal more persuading down the Grey Grebe the other night than Arthur had initially thought necessary. He’d been forced to call upon fictional relatives who had been cruelly reduced to the alms houses, for good measure reminding Asa that he also had a wife and two young mouths to feed. The plan was to scare Swarsby shitless then drive him down the bank, and Arthur had told Asa they were getting a grand each for their trouble. His friend was a man of simple tastes, a lower share of the spoils would surely do him.
“But how legal is it?” said Asa.
“Shove off illegal! After what we’ve seen on picket, don’t talk to me about illegal. This cunt’s blackmailing another cunt over his own kid, you know. Never mind that it’s his lot what started this mess.”
Asa nodded.
“An’ if I’ve the measure of him, Scanny, he’ll hand over the dough, no question, then that’s me, you and ours sorted till this strike blows over. Trust us, pal, MPs don’t want stuff like this coming out. You remember Profumo?”
“Not really.”
“Well, put it this way: it didn’t work out for Macmillan. And Swarsby’s not about to call the pigs. And before you say ’owt, if it makes you feel any better.” Arthur laid a hand against his heart. “I’ll donate some to union from what we get.”
He sprinted across the lawn to the French doors, where he was surprised to see the window still hadn’t been fixed. A wooden panel covered where the glass had been. Arthur forced it open with ease.
The lounge had been allowed to breathe now the extra boxes had been unpacked. Daylight made the piano gleam. The oil canvas on the wall could have been freshly painted and the breeze clinked the chandelier, which resembled a crystal jellyfish suspended from the ceiling.
Arthur was admiring it all when Asa barged past. The far-right door led to the atrium and then the staircase. The master bedroom at the front of the house was located up top, overlooking the grounds and the countryside leading to Brantford pit, whose disused Grafton Belt was rumoured to stretch this far. Arthur could actually see a hairline crack in the nearest wall. Subsidence might be the death of this place, which was an irony not lost on him.
They reached the stairs. Although the atrium was still undecorated, at least the mess Arthur remembered from the other month had been cleared away. The cricket bat felt horrid and heavy as he gave it a tester swing. He led the way upstairs to the master bedroom.
All the doors on the upper floor were closed, thank fuck. Arthur arrived at Clive Swarsby’s bedroom, the door making a rustling noise on the carpet as he pushed it open, finding an empty bed waiting for him.
He stopped in his tracks. He stowed the cricket bat under his arm and made a shape with his hands, as if holding an imaginary rugby ball. Asa tapped him on the shoulder. What? Arthur wanted to hiss.
Asa touched the bed, signalled for Arthur to do the same.
The sheets were warm.
Arthur cocked his head and left the room, sliding, flush against the corridor wall, listening at every closed door he came to.
He heard a noise, a rustle of paper on the other side of a third door to his left. Arthur held the cricket bat low, the first outing the willow wood had enjoyed since his declaration with it on a hundred and five in the summer of 1981. With grass stains on his whites, Arthur had been the king of the cricket pavilion that night.
The door swung open to reveal Clive Swarsby, rotund in winceyette pyjamas, slippers on his desk, reading a newspaper. Arthur made a floorboard creak as he entered the room. That got Swarsby’s attention. The man leapt from his seat, sending his chair rolling on its casters until it struck a radiator fitted against the wall. That big sarcastic face didn’t even seem shocked by Arthur’s arrival. If anything, it looked resigned.
15
SHE WORE A denim shirt with both sleeves rolled up. She wore black leggings and a chain of fool’s gold, flopped and gathering sweat in the crook of her neck. Clive’s credit card was paying for this hot box. Bold enough to turn her nose up at a coach, Evie had still been reticent to splash out on first class train tickets.
Dabbing her brow with a tissue, she wished she could crack a window. No such luck. She amused herself by noting the sheepish happiness of a middle-aged woman aiding a toddler down the aisle; by listening to a man in the seat behind remarking on things only old people noticed: the amount of spires prodding between observable houses; a murmuration of starlings pulsing above the olive-coloured rooftops.
Clive knew all about this trip, he just hadn’t been willing to pay for it. In fact it was his idea to begin with. It was best Evie and Duncan visit their mother. It was the summer holidays, and besides, it was high time Fiona lent a hand. “Only you’ll have to ask her to foot the bill,” Clive said. “Your mother’s still not talking to me.”
Rather than ask anything of her mother, Evie had lifted the Mastercard from her father’s wallet and used it to purchase two open returns to London. She was a dab hand at forging Clive’s signature, having used it to fund various indiscretions in the past, and fortunately her face had boiled into such a contagious smile as she paid the man behind the counter at the station, that he didn’t look at the name on the card. After all it was the first time in months Evie had been allowed home. No wonder she’d been nearly overcome.
In the aisle seat Duncan slept. He’d slept since they left Doncaster. Slept Britain by. Now there was one hour to go. One hour until the hiss into King’s Cross, the station’s clock tower rising above semi-circular windows that looked like amused eyes: a frontage that seemed to know something you didn’t.
When they finally stepped onto the platform their mother was waiting for them. She wore a teal-coloured outfit and red-trimmed sunglasses. She was so thin Evie could have broken her over one knee.
“What’s she doing here?”
Already Duncan was tall enough to look down on Evie. “I called ahead,” he replied as they hurried towards Fiona. “Why slum the tube when we can have a lift?”
Evie quickly wheeled her luggage ahead so she could impart a brisk hug upon their mother. The rims of the pores on Fiona Swarsby’s nose were highly visible thanks to the over-slap of foundation they had received. She was a woman in her fifties. Growing up, Evie and her friends had called her The Versace Bag.