Heading Inland

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‘You said you did.’

‘He’s impotent.’

‘So what . . .’

‘He’s in love with me. He’ll do anything.’

Sydney stared at Carrie, confounded. Carrie was round and soft and lily white. She seemed peculiarly full of herself.

‘So let me get this straight . . .’ Sydney said, wanting details so badly.

‘He just wants you to leave him in peace.’

‘Does Jack know yet?’ Sydney asked, knowing she was routed and turning nasty.

‘He doesn’t know.’

Carrie appeared unperturbed. Sydney shrugged. ‘Better make sure he doesn’t find out, then.’

Carrie only smiled.

‘Jack made a move on me, when we met up recently,’ Sydney said. ‘He tried that old three button trick of his.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘So you don’t even know about that one yet?’ Sydney asked. ‘Oh, you’ll just love it. It’s so cheap.’ And she set about putting Carrie straight on that particular matter.

He’d kept on nagging so in the end she’d been forced to give in to him. ‘It’s a terrible waste,’ he said, ‘to keep on leaving the seats empty.’

Anyhow, Carrie was bored of sitting at home every night with nothing to do and no proper conversation. Sometimes he mentioned the name of a new actress. Sometimes he wasn’t too tactful and inadvertently made her feel her age.

When Heinz finally entered the box, a little late, without his tie, pale-faced, dishevelled, Jack muttered, ‘Christ, I’d almost forgotten about him.’

Carrie said nothing, but she hadn’t forgotten.

Sydney was sitting on her bed and in front of her was a pile of scrap books. She opened the first one. Dry red wines from the Perth region. She touched the wine label and wondered about her mummy and her daddy. Her elbows were itchy. She reached for a tub of Vaseline. She dipped in her fingers.

Heinz had had several options: to forget about her, to confront her and tell her what a bastard Jack was, to be a kind of bastard himself. He was old. If he’d learned anything along the line, he’d learned that the little things didn’t matter, at the end of the day, but the big things mattered, and sometimes you had to compromise yourself, however slightly, to try to maintain that bigger picture.

In the interval they bumped into one another at the bar. Jack was several feet away ordering drinks. Heinz had given plenty of thought to this moment. He’d had several options available. He’d taken the cheapest. Arriving late, no tie, the business.

‘You look terrible,’ she said, glancing over towards Jack, her lips barely moving. She stared at his shirt. ‘And your buttons,’ she added, ‘are done up all wrong.’

He looked down at himself. ‘Really?’ he said, wheezing, like he’d barely noticed. But when he looked back up again his old heart began pumping.

Jack was walking over towards them holding two glasses. A whisky, a port and lemon. He was walking over. He was close and he was closer.

Carrie put out her hand and touched Heinz’s buttons. ‘Oh God,’ she said softly, ‘that stupid three button trick, you old hound,’ and her eyes started sparkling.

WESLEY

Blisters

‘Look,’ Trevor said, ‘you’ve got to serve from the back, see?’

Wesley dropped the orange he’d just picked up.

‘Put it where it was before,’ Trevor said sniffily. ‘Exactly.’

Wesley adjusted the placement of the orange. There. Just so. It was neat now. The display looked hunky-dory.

‘Let me quickly say something,’ Wesley said, as Trevor turned to go and unload some more boxes from the van.

‘What?’

‘It’s just that if you serve people from the back of the stall they immediately start thinking that what you’re giving them isn’t as good as what’s on display.’

Trevor said nothing.

‘See what I mean?’

‘So what?’

‘Well, I’m just saying that if you want to build up customer confidence then it’s a better idea to give them the fruit they can see.’

‘It’s more work that way,’ Trevor said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

‘Well, I don’t care about that,’ Wesley responded. ‘I’m the one who’ll end up having to do most of the serving while you’re running the deliveries and I don’t mind.’

Trevor gave Wesley a deep look and then shrugged and walked off to the van.

Another new job. Selling fruit off a stall on the Roman Road. Wesley was handsome and intelligent and twenty-three years old and he’d had a run of bad luck so now he was working the markets. No references needed. Actually, on the markets a bad temper was considered something of a bonus. Nobody messed you around. If they did, though, then you had to look out for yourself.

Trevor had red hair and a pierced nose. Wesley looked very strait-laced to him in his clean corduroy trousers and polo-neck jumper, and his hands were soft and he spoke too posh. What Trevor didn’t realize, however, was that Wesley had been spoilt rotten as a child so was used to getting his own way and could manipulate and wheedle like a champion if the urge took him. Wesley had yet to display to Trevor the full and somewhat questionable force of his personality.

Wesley pulled his weight. That, at least, was something, Trevor decided. After they’d packed up on their first night he invited Wesley to the pub for a drink as a sign of his good faith. Wesley said he wanted something to eat instead. So they went for pie and mash together.

Trevor had some eels and a mug of tea. Wesley ate a couple of meat pies. Wesley liked the old-fashioned tiles and the tables in the pie and mash shop. He remarked on this to Trevor. Trevor grunted.

‘My dad was in the navy,’ Wesley said, out of the blue.

‘Yeah?’

‘He taught me how to box.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Last job I had, I punched my boss in the face. He was up a ladder. I was on a roof. Broke his collar bone.’

‘You’re kidding!’ Trevor was impressed.

‘Nope.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Tried to prosecute.’

‘What!?’

‘I buggered off. I live my life,’ Wesley said plainly, ‘by certain rules. I’ll do my whack, but when push comes to shove, I want to be treated decent and to keep my mind free. See?’

Trevor was mystified. He ate his eels, silently.

‘I had a brother,’ Wesley said, ‘and I killed him when I was a kid. An accident and everything. But that’s made me think about things in a different way.’

‘Yeah?’ Trevor was hostile now. ‘How did you kill him?’

‘Playing.’

‘Playing what?’

‘None of your fucking business.’

Trevor’s eyebrows rose and he returned to his meal.

‘I want to do the decent thing,’ Wesley said. ‘You know? And sometimes that’ll get you into all kinds of grief.’

Trevor didn’t say anything.

‘Watch this.’

Trevor looked up. Wesley had hold of one of the meat pies. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and then pushed the pie in whole. Every last crumb. Trevor snorted. He couldn’t help it. Once Wesley had swallowed the pie he asked Jean – the woman who served part-time behind the counter – for a straw. When she gave him one, he drank a whole mug of tea through it up his left nostril.

Trevor roared with laughter. He was definitely impressed.