‘Am I in the way?’
‘Not at all, but you’re nearly in the road. Can’t you see?’
‘No.’
It was arctic and the man’s hands were a dirty blue. Cars whipped over the hump in the road, making them scrape and bang. Nancy said, ‘Won’t you warm up inside?’
‘May I?’
Mr Lawton used to say things like that. May I? She opened up and dragged the cardboard through to the back room. It wouldn’t feel right, throwing it out. When she came back he was standing inside, his hands on what Riley had called a figurine lamp — a woman with scarves all over and a light socket sticking out of her head. His fingers moved so gently building the thing in his mind, that it became beautiful.
‘I’m Mrs Riley.’
‘I’m Mr Johnson.’
Who would have believed it? Over the following months they became friends. He was her one secret from Riley And then he disappeared. In one sense it was for good, because a very different man eventually came back. He seemed frail and uncertain. He sat down with shaking arms.
‘What happened?’ asked Nancy anxiously.
‘I got my head kicked in.’ His goggles moved on a rumpled nose. ‘I can’t remember much of the present. This morning, last week… they’ve gone down the plughole.’
Nancy lit the gas fire, and she thought of the entertainment Uncle Bertie used to kick off when they were in Brighton. It was called ‘Silly Secrets’. Cheerily she said, ‘Shall we play a game?’
‘All right.’
‘You tell me a secret, and then I’ll tell you one.’ The idea was that people confessed to daft things they’d done. (Once, in a shop, Uncle Bertie had used a toilet, only to find it was part of a mock bathroom for sale.)
‘That’s not fair,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘I won’t remember and you will.’
‘I’ll tell no one.
Mr Johnson said, ‘I once had a son.’
Nancy covered her mouth. He leaned forward, vapour rising off him, his goggles full of condensation, and he talked about summers in Southport with the same longing that she had for Brighton. And Nancy waited, sensing that something awful had happened to his boy but he never said what. The next day Mr Johnson turned up and Nancy tipped out things she’d never said and thought she’d never say — how she’d met Riley the life she’d lost at Lawton’s, the children she’d never had.., the trial. And Mr Johnson listened, warming his grey-blue hands: a gentleman who would remember nothing.
Nancy glanced at the sputtering fire. On her lap was a plastic bag. She’d found it a couple of weeks ago when she went into the back room to pick up her shopping. It was full of notebooks, each neatly numbered on the front. They belonged to Mr Johnson, the gentleman who could remember nothing. Nancy had waited for him to come back, but he’d vanished in the mist, just like Riley on his way to Tottenham. She glanced towards the door… and reached into the bag. It was wrong, she knew, but ever since that barrister had died, the trial had returned. Sensations from that time had been prickling her like pins in a doll. The only way to numb the pain was to fill her mind with something else, and the puzzle book was full — she rooted around for number one. On the front was written ‘My Story’.
Her mouth was open and her hair tingled. This wasn’t right.
I call myself George.
She hadn’t known that. He was just Mr Johnson.
I’m a Harrogate boy a Yorkshire lad. There’s a little lane that runs by a bowling green and a tennis court of orange grit. On the other side are houses with mown lawns. At the end of the lane there’s a clump of trees and a fence with a gate. It seems that the sun is always shining here and the flowers are taller than me. Foxgloves, I think they’re called. But my earliest memory of this place is in the rain. My mother had made a canvas shelter for my pram.
Nancy snapped it shut. This was wrong. But she reached in and opened another number, wondering what had happened to Mr Johnson when he’d grown up.
I’d seen her quite a few times, and always at night. She stood beneath a street lamp, hands behind her back like Dixon of Dock Green. The most amazing thing was her white headdress. It was like a tent without guide ropes.
The doorbell sounded.
Nancy dropped the book, composed herself and presently sold a mirror to Mr Prosser — a dealer in quality second-hand. He was always mooching around, asking how her man found such good stuff. She told him nothing. When he’d gone she tied a knot in Mr Johnson’s bag and pushed it into the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
But that left her exposed. She fell back in her seat, eyes clenched and hands over her ears. In that inner darkness, she sensed the patient ‘attendance’ of Mr Wyecliffe. It was a word he’d often used. She’d thought he was a sorcerer. How else did he pull off the impossible?
After being charged, Riley was hauled before a porky magistrate with a runny nose, who, between sneezes, sent her man to Wormwood Scrubs on remand. But Mr Wyecliffe got him out within a week. No special keys or dodgy chains. ‘Just words, well used, ma’am,’ he said, waving a grey handkerchief. ‘All that requires my attendance now is the trial.’ He sniffed and blinked, as if he hadn’t worked out how to do it yet.
The solicitor had brought Riley home and stayed for a ‘preliminary conference’. They sat in the living room, drinking Uncle Bertie’s ‘poison’. Riley was humiliated and speechless and couldn’t look in Nancy’s direction. He was quaking.
‘We’ll use counsel,’ said Mr Wyecliffe significantly to break the silence. ‘I’ll get the best.’
‘I know who I want.’ It was the first thing Riley had said. He glanced at a spot near Nancy’s feet and asked for some sandwiches.
When she came back, Mr Wyecliffe was making notes, and Riley appeared deathly calm. The shaking had stopped. He spoke under his breath while the solicitor stuffed his face as if he’d had no breakfast. Her man stared at the carpet and said, ‘How the hell am I to know what the tenants get up to? I’m hardly ever over there. Ask the wife.’
‘I will, in due course,’ promised Mr Wyecliffe. ‘In the meantime, might I have another sandwich?’
Nancy gave him hers.
It turned out the tenants had all been in arrears. Eventually Riley had shown them the door. That’s why they’d set him up, he said.
Mr Wyecliffe nodded slowly stubbing the crumbs on his knee. Licking his fingers, he said, ‘But what of Bradshaw? He’s your real problem.’
‘I’ve thrown his girls onto the street. Now he’s trying to make me pay.’
‘That’s a guess.’
‘Why else would he lie?’
‘Bradshaw is of good character.’
‘So am I.’
‘Indeed.’ After a moment, as if he’d just finished reading the instructions that had come with a gadget from Japan, Mr Wyecliffe said, ‘Okey-dokey Bradshaw is the pimp.’
Nancy had hated the sound of that p-word. It had been used in her own living room, leaving a heavy stain on the air that she couldn’t wipe away It was still there, even though Riley had been acquitted, even though all those terrible people had been lying. Something ghastly had entered her home. It was like waking to a burglary. The tidying up made no difference.
Thoughtfully Mr Wyecliffe said, ‘The claptrap about the Pieman allows them to say very little about you, makes the story shorter, easier for three of them to learn by heart’ — he looked at his empty plate, his features tangled up in his beard — ‘but counsel will not advance a guess at trial.’
Riley leaned back, genuinely calm now — Nancy could tell. ‘Who said anything about guesses?’
Mr Wyecliffe put his papers in his tatty briefcase and said, ‘I ought to observe that no one can save you from the truth or a lie that hangs together. It is a sad fact of life, but the two are often interchangeable.’
‘Just get me Glendinning.’