"I can't believe you said that," snapped his sister. "Aren't you at all upset that she's ill?"
If he was, he wasn't going to admit it. "My terms, Emma, or not at all. Have you a pen? This is my telephone number at home." He gave it to her. "I presume you'll be at the farm for Christmas, so I suggest you talk this over with Ma and ring me with your verdict. And don't forget I promised to deck Hugh the next time I saw him, so take that into account before you reach a decision."
"You can't hit Hugh," she said indignantly. "He's fifty-three."
Deacon bared his teeth at the receiver. "Good, then one punch should do it easily."
There was another silence. "Actually, he's been wanting to apologize for ages," she said weakly. "He didn't really mean what he said. It just sort of came out in the heat of the moment. He regretted it afterwards."
"Poor old Hugh. It's going to be doubly painful then when I break his nose."
Terry appeared from the warehouse with two filthy suitcases, which he parked on the backseat. He offered the explanation that, as the warehouse was full of fucking thieves, he was safeguarding his possessions by bringing them with him. Deacon thought it looked more like wholesale removal to what promised to be luxury living.
"Doesn't the endless 'fucking' get a little boring after a while?'' he murmured as he drew away from the curb.
They ate their takeaway, perched on the hood of Deacon's car. They were in danger of freezing to death in the night air, but he preferred that to having his upholstery splattered with red tandoori chicken dye. Terry wanted to know why they hadn't eaten in the restaurant.
"I didn't think we'd ever get served," said Deacon rather grimly, "not after you called them wogs."
Terry grinned. "What d'you call them, then?"
"People."
They sat in silence for a while, gazing down the street ahead of them. Fortunately it was well nigh deserted, so they attracted little curiosity. Deacon wondered who would have been the more embarrassed, himself or Terry, had some acquaintance passed by and seen them.
"So what are we going to do next?" asked Terry, cramming a last onion bhaji into his mouth. "Go down the pub? Visit a club maybe? Get stoned?"
Deacon, who had been looking forward to putting his feet up in front of the fire and dozing through whatever film was on the television, groaned quietly to himself. Pubbing, clubbing, or getting stoned? He felt old and decrepit beside the hyperactivity of movement-fidgeting, scratching, position changing-that had been going on beside him for over an hour now. This, in turn, meant that his mind toiled with the threat of fleas, lice, and bedbugs, and the problem of how to get Terry into a bath and every stitch of his clothing into the washing machine without having his motives misconstrued.
One thing was certain. He had no intention of giving house room to Terry's wildlife.
The row between Emma and Hugh Tremayne had reached stentorian proportions and, as usual, Hugh had resorted to the whiskey bottle. "Have you any idea what it's like to be the only man in a houseful of domineering women?" he demanded. "Don't you think I've been tempted to do what Michael did and walk out? Nag, nag, nag. That's the only thing you and your mother have any talent for, isn't it?"
"I'm not the one who called Michael a sack of worthless shit," said Emma furiously. "That was your wonderful idea, although what made you think you could order him out of his own house I can't imagine. The only reason you're in our family is because you married me."
"You're right," he said abruptly, replenishing his glass. "And what the hell am I still doing here? I sometimes think the only member of your family I've ever really liked was your brother. He's certainly the least critical."
"Don't be so childish," she snapped.
He stared at her moodily over the rim of his glass. "I never liked Julia-she was a frigid bitch-and I certainly didn't blame Michael for taking up with Clara. Yet I let myself get dragged into defending you and your mother when I should have told Michael to go ahead and smash the house up with you and Penelope in it. As far as I'm concerned, he was well within his rights. You'd been screaming at him like a couple of fishwives for well over an hour before he lost his temper, and you had the damn nerve to accuse his wife of being common as muck." He shook his head and moved towards the door. "I'm not interested anymore. If you want Michael's help, then you'd better persuade your mother to treat him with a little respect."
Emma was close to tears. "If I try, she won't talk to him at all. It's Julia's fault. If she hadn't told him Ma was ill, he'd probably have rung anyway."
"You're running out of people to blame."
"Yes, but what are we going to do?" she wailed. "She's got to sell the farm."
"It's your blasted family," he growled, "so you sort it out. You know damn well I never wanted your mother's money. It was obvious she'd use it as a stick to beat us with." He slammed the door behind him. "And I'm not going to the farm for Christmas," he yelled from the hall. "I've done it for sixteen bloody years, and it's been sixteen years of undiluted misery."
"This is how we're going to play it," said Deacon, pausing outside the door to his flat after carrying a suitcase up three flights of stairs. "You're going to remove everything washable from these cases out here on the landing. We will then put it into black trash bags which I will empty into the washing machine while you're having your bath. You will leave what you're wearing outside the bathroom door, and when you're locked inside, I will take your clothes away and replace them with some of my own. Are we agreed?''
In the half-light of the landing, Terry looked a great deal older than fourteen. "You sound like you're scared of me," he remarked curiously. "What did that old bugger Lawrence really say?"
"He told me how unhygienic you were likely to be."
"Oh, right." Terry looked amused. "You sure he didn't tell you about the rape scam?"
"That, too," said Deacon.
"It always works, you know. I met a guy once who scored five hundred off of it. Some old geezer took him in out of the goodness of his heart, and the next thing he knew this kid was screaming rape all over the place." He smiled in a friendly way. "I'll bet Lawrence tore strips off you for inviting me back here-he's sharp as a tack, that one-but he's wrong if he thinks I'd turn on you. Billy taught me this saying: Never bite the hand that feeds you. So you've got nothing to worry about, okay? You're safe with me."
Deacon opened the front door and reached inside for the light switch. "That's good news, Terry. It lets us both off the hook."
"Oh, yeah? You had something planned just in case, did you?''
"It's called revenge."
Terry's smile broadened into a grin. "You can't take revenge on an underage kid. The cops'd crucify you."
Deacon smiled back, but rather unpleasantly. "What makes you think you'd still be a kid when it's done, or that I'm the one who'd do it? Here's another saying Billy should have taught you: Revenge is a dish best eaten cold." His voice dropped abruptly to sound like sifted gravel. "You'll have a second or two to remember it when a psycho like Denning does to you what was done to Walter this afternoon. And, if you're lucky, you'll live to regret it."
"Yeah, well, it's not going to happen, is it?" muttered Terry, somewhat alarmed by Deacon's tone. "Like I said, you're safe with me."
Terry was deeply critical of Deacon's flat. He didn't like the way the front door opened into the sitting room-"Jesus, it means you've got to be well tidy all the time"-nor the narrow corridor that led off it to the bathroom and the two bedrooms-"It'd be bigger without these stupid walls all over the place''-only the kitchen passed muster because it was attached to the sitting room-"I guess that's pretty handy for TV dinners." Once all his underlying odors had been effectively soaked away, he prowled around it in a pair of oversized jeans and a sweater, shaking his head over the blandness of it all. He reeked strongly of Jazz aftershave ("nicked from a chemist," he said proudly) which Deacon had to admit introduced an exotic quality into the atmosphere that hadn't been there before.