Chapter Eight
Brocklow
“You’d think they’d be the smoothest, cleanest men in Christendom.”
Becki and I stood side by side outside the clubhouse in the late December dusk, gripping mugs of cooling coffee as we watched the end of the match. It was my fourth Saturday here, and winter was closing in, sheathing the world in gloom. The floodlights cast an alien glare across the field, freezing every blade of grass into an icicle.
“So why’s that, then?” Becki asked.
“Full body mud packs, every week.” I watched the scrum lurch back across the twenty-two yard line, wallowing like a buffalo, steaming under the lights. An extraordinary beast: I felt like David Attenborough, privileged to see it foraging in its natural habitat.
Becki gave a dirty laugh. “Some of them are pretty smooth,” she said. “I wouldn’t call them clean.” She meant the young ones, whom Brendan labelled the yoof, the collectors of legless nights out and filthy jokes. They’d stopped trying to chat me up a couple of weeks back. I preferred the company of Brendan, Frank and Bob; lanky, beaky Stevo with his Oldham accent, and Flipper, not a schoolteacher after all, I had discovered, but a physio.
The players weren’t as posh as I’d expected: Hugh was the most upper-crust. Accountant, brickie, butcher, computer-prodder, they genuflected before Wade Dooley’s shirt and traded endless favours, jokes and banter. Although the banter made me cringe, it acted as a sticking plaster for my woes. It couldn’t cure the worry and the pain, but it wrapped them in a comfortable bandage of nonsense that muffled the voices in my head for a few hours every Saturday.
The kitchen helped as well. I hankered after that kitchen all week while I was falling over myself in the Woolpack’s cluttered lean-to. Even so, I felt bad about leaving Rhoda behind to cope, and guilty about judging her crazy, now that I had some inkling of what was wrong.
It was only an inkling still: I couldn’t ask, and Rhoda, stiff and prickly, wasn’t telling. When I went to Fylington library to check out my theory, the books I wanted were on loan and the computers were down because someone had nicked the monitors for the third month in a row. Fylington wasn’t immune from crime, then. But it was hardly a hotbed of gangsters either. In the rugby club’s shining kitchen I could put my worries aside and begin to feel like a proper chef again, brisk and purposeful.
Becki greeted me every week with an affable punch and a query as to which one I fancied? I never chose. Becki couldn’t work me out. For my part, I couldn’t see her sitting meekly behind a desk at the NorthWestern Building Society, twittering small-talk at old ladies. They’d have to tie her to the chair. She could hardly keep still for a minute without bouncing up for a joke or a drink or a tweak of a player’s biceps.
“What about Gary Killick, then?” she said, eyes dancing. “Or Tom? Go on, ask Tom out! I dare you.”
“Not my type. Anyway, those two do everything together.”
“Make it a threesome, then! Double the fun!”
“I’ll give it a miss this week, thanks.”
“You ought to come down to Total with Brad and Harvey and the lads some time. They’re a right laugh, that lot.”
“I’ll leave them to you,” I said. “They’re too young for me.”
“Come on, you’re not old, Lannie! You’re in your prime! Women don’t reach their sexual peak till whatsit, thirty five or something.”
“Maybe I’ll give it a miss for the next eight years, then.”
“Aah! We’ll have to fix you up with one of the older guys. Shame about Hugh being taken,” said Becki with a regretful toss of her ponytail. “But maybe this Tamara thing isn’t serious.”
“Maybe.” It was serious, according to Charlotte, who seemingly didn’t like it. I didn’t know why not. Hugh, after all, was on the verge of thirty, would be celebrating his birthday next month at the club, God help him. I’d already agreed to do the catering.
“What about Brendan?” said Becki, upending her coffee dregs onto the ground. “Brendan’s nice.”
“Brendan?” I repeated in surprise.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Well, he’s married, for a start.”
“Yeah, but all he gets off Rhoda is a load of grief.”
That made me uncomfortable. “Rhoda’s not well.”
“Huh! She looks fine to me,” said Becki dismissively.
“I wouldn’t have thought Brendan was your type.”
She giggled. “You never know. He’s cute. Chunky. Or what about Niall? Niall’s not bad.”
“Niall?” I looked at Niall, staggering out of the scrum which had just fallen over in a heap of legs and curses. He was good-looking enough in a ruddy-faced sort of way, but he was also, in Bob’s words, a bit of a plonker.
“Niall’s married too,” I reminded Becki.
“Hmph! To that snooty bitch! A right bundle of laughs, she is.”
“Ssh,” I said, for AnneMarie was walking past.
Becki’s chin lifted pugnaciously. “Orright?” she called out.
“Fine,” said AnneMarie expressionlessly. She didn’t even look at me. “How are you, Becki? Been down the clubs lately?”
Becki shrugged. “Might have been.”
“Brad told me you were down at Total last weekend.”
“If you know, why bother asking?”
“Good night out?”
“Yeah, mad. There was a load of talent there.”
“So did you score?” AnneMarie made a pale attempt at a smile. Becki gave her a big, tooth-baring grin in return.
“Don’t I always?”
“Usually,” said AnneMarie. “I’ll see you later, then.” She went on her way to the bar.
“Well, all right, she’s not a great conversationalist. But at least she’s trying to be friendly,” I said.
“No she bloody isn’t. She can’t stand me. Thinks I’m so immoral. Hah!” Becki laughed shortly. “She’s stuck with it. See that cross round her scrawny neck? That’s a laugh, that is. Thinks she’s a bloody nun! I bet Niall doesn’t get much, poor guy.” She looked at me sidelong. “You don’t fancy Niall, then?”
“Not really. No point chasing married men. What about...” I dithered. Frank was effectively married too. “What about KK?”
Thirtyish and unattached, KK was less of a plonker than his older brother Niall, though more morose; and, as steward, was a stickler for proper protocol at the bar. Serve customers in order, always lock the till before collecting glasses, that sort of thing. He was even bigger than his brother, with an unkempt mane of black hair: a wolf to Niall’s fox. He played sometimes in the back row but usually at lock, for which the main qualifications were apparently being six foot four and mad as a tankful of adders. (I was learning, you see. I’d even kept a straight face when told that Frank used to be a hooker.) KK and Becki were at permanent loggerheads.
“Jesus!” said Becki. “You don’t fancy KK, do you? He’s an animal.”
KK’s shaggy head appeared in the doorway. A yellow bruise told of his concussion the week before, the reason he wasn’t playing. According to Frank, who often ferried him down there, he spent one Saturday in three in casualty. He said sharply to Becki, “You’re meant to be serving.”
“What about Sammie?”
“She’s washing glasses.”
“What about you?”
“I need to change a barrel. Get your arse back in here.”
Becki sniffed, but showed no inclination to shift her arse. “Wish the other guy had hit him harder,” she said when he had gone. “Bloody pain in the neck. And you know what?” She lowered her voice. “I reckon he’s fiddling the till.”
“KK? No, surely not. He’s far too strict about how the bar runs to go fiddling it.”
“That’s just cover, I reckon,” said Becki. She touched her finger to the side of her nose in the sort of old-fashioned gesture Nan might make.
“But Niall would go spare,” I said.
“Hah! Niall wouldn’t notic
e.”
“You should tell him.”
“He wouldn’t believe me. KK’s his darling ickle baby brother, isn’t he?”
“So why do you think he’s fiddling the till?”
“Someone is,” said Becki darkly, and strutted inside. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve never worked in a place yet where all the staff were clean. I couldn’t see why it had to be KK, though, unless Becki resented the fact that he made no effort to flirt with her.
Becki wasn’t exactly scrupulous: she had a habit of pouring herself lagers and writing IOUs for the till. At the end of an evening there could be half a dozen of them in there, signed with a big circle over the i in her bold, childish handwriting. It drove KK round the bend.
She drove me round the bend, too, by feeding the geese with bits of pie crust, so that whenever they saw me coming out to the bins they would waddle greedily over and push at my legs, then hiss when I shooed them away. I couldn’t stand those geese. And she kept borrowing things from the kitchen: my big knife and the milk-jug, which she didn’t return until I asked, and a red Zippo lighter, which she never returned at all.
Draining my cold coffee, I went back in to check the shepherds’ pies browning in the ovens. The club’s ceiling bristled with ferocious green and scarlet garlands that scraped the forwards’ heads. It was five days to Christmas, and I was already sick of pie.
Meat pie for the players, fish pie for the freezer, and Madderlow Mud Pie for the ramblers. I’d enjoyed making that one, at least. Arthur had a free sample and gave it his highest accolade – “That were all right, that.” I think he was angling for more dishes to be named after him. I’d promised Brendan that a full range of new puddings would be up and running after New Year. That would make Charlotte happy.
But I was still looking over my shoulder. Although I felt safe enough in the rugby club, the Woolpack worried me. A public house was just that, open to all comers. I couldn’t shake off the knowledge of the rats scuttling beyond its walls, the greedy, baleful pack of Karl’s friends casting round for my scent.
Karl’s friends. A wave of laughter from the players washed towards me. How did my little brother end up with friends like that? What did I do wrong? What could they supply that I couldn’t? Apart from the drugs, I mean.
I suppose they were all small, bright-eyed boys once. They weren’t born rats: they changed. But that’s what happens if you live on a rubbish tip with bait laid down everywhere. Enticing, addictive, lethal: bait designed to turn people into animals that would steal and fight and lie and kill and pay and pay and pay again for another poisonous dose.
I shook my head to repel them. Leaving the kitchen, I went in search of KK, who was shifting barrels round the back. KK had a secret, which I knew and Becki didn’t. I checked there was no-one in earshot, and kept my voice low.
“I read your recipes,” I said. “Interesting. I tried one or two. Didn’t have time to try them all. The prune cake was, er, okay.”
He brightened up. “You liked it?”
“Sure. Very moist.”
“Could I sell that recipe? Women’s magazines buy them, right?”
“I’ve come across cakes very similar,” I warned. “It’d need to be more original to stand a chance.” And a lot less pruney.
“You try the pumpkin muffins?”
“Not yet.” I hate pumpkin.
“That’s original, though, isn’t it?”
“Up to a point. Australian cookbooks are very big on pumpkin.”
“Courgette,” said KK confidently. “I’m developing this new recipe. Courgette, lime zest, demerara sugar, white of egg.”
“I’ve come across a few recipes for zucchini cake.”
“Zucchini cake?”
“Same thing.”
“With lime?”
“No, not with lime.”
“Grapefruit as an alternative,” said KK. “I’ll give you a copy next week. You in over Christmas?”
“No, I’m away.”
“What about New Year? Big do in the club. Has Niall asked you about the catering yet?”
“No. Is he likely to? I’ll be working at the Woolpack New Year’s Eve.”
“You won’t. Brendan closes it.” No wonder it wasn’t making any money. “Niall’s been telling everyone you’ll put a hotpot on.”
“Well, he’d better untell them.”
“Do you not do parties, then?”
“It’s not that. I’ll be doing Hugh’s birthday bash. I’m just not into New Year, that’s all.” Anybody could turn up at a New Year party. Saturday afternoons in the club were nice and enclosed, and I didn’t mind Hugh’s party, since that would be limited to his friends: but a big open-door free-for-all made me a touch nervous.
“That’s a shame,” said KK. “Not just because of the hotpot, I mean.” He sounded like he meant it.
“I could always make some and leave it for Becki to heat up on the night.” But KK pulled a face. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“You’re telling Becki, then. She won’t take it from me, she’s up in arms whenever I try to tell her what to do. She’ll make a right song and dance.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.”
“And I’ll tell Niall you’re not coming, if you like, save you the grief.”
“What grief?”
KK sighed. “He’s liable to take it personally, put it that way.”
“Maybe AnneMarie could do the hotpot,” I said with a flicker of mischief, for AnneMarie had never yet come near the kitchen. I couldn’t see her dirtying her elegant hands.
“Maybe. She’ll do whatever Niall wants,” said KK wryly.
That surprised me. “She doesn’t strike me as the doormat type.”
“Oh, she likes him to be in charge. And he likes everyone to be at his beck and call. Unfortunately they don’t often oblige.”
“Do you?”
He gave me a rare, wolfish smile. “Only when I can’t avoid it. If you don’t fancy New Year, don’t let him persuade you. You mustn’t give in to everything Niall wants, or he’ll have you down for all sorts else.”
“Will he?”
“Believe me,” said KK soberly, the smile gone, “he’ll think he owns you. You’ll never hear the end of it.” He shouldered a keg as if it were made of polystyrene, and ambled inside.