Blind Needle Read online

  The grass verge at the side of the road came suddenly nearer and I thought we were going over, but we were coasting into a lay-by. She turned off the engine, which clanked and rattled to ominous silence. The rain drummed on the roof.

  She said bitterly, ‘They pick their moments, don’t they? We passed a garage back there but it decided to bide its time. You’re not a mechanical genius by any chance?’ She pushed back her hood and a tousled mop of curly hair sprang up. Yet she was older than I thought she might be, mid-thirties or thereabouts. In the glow from the instruments her eyes gleamed very large and dark.

  She hit the wheel with her fist. ‘It’s my own damn stupid fault. I noticed an oil-leak and did nothing about it. I should have got the rear window seen to and didn’t. I should never have got married and did.’

  She had one of those classless university-trained voices and the God-given assurance that went with it. I was rather envious of such people. They were never snubbed by uniformed officials. They expected prompt service and therefore got it. Mechanical contrivances were not supposed to misbehave.

  She looked my way. I’d taken off my hat to wipe my forehead and she could see that my hair was cropped and grey. I suppose she saw a middle-aged man. My face I knew had a bit of a pallor.

  ‘If not a bank-robber,’ she said, ‘maybe an escaped convict.’

  ‘Do you make a habit of picking up escaped convicts?’ I said.

  She laughed. It was easy and unforced; you didn’t hear many laughs like that where I had come from. They were either harsh and cold, flung out with force, or they were whimpering and meaningless, done in corners behind clenched hands. Sometimes you couldn’t distinguish them from weeping.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling the hood up. ‘Let’s start walking.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Civilisation.’

  There was a thin verge of grass blasted flat by the traffic and a footpath, a strip of smooth tarmac shining in the drab light.

  ‘Aren’t you going to lock it?’ I asked as she came round the car.

  ‘With no rear window?’

  I turned up my collar. ‘Which way? The garage?’

  ‘That was at least five miles back. We’ll walk on. You never know, there might be a cottage or a farm or something. I can see it now: a flagged farmhouse kitchen with a log fire and a plump rosy-cheeked farmer’s wife standing at the door with an oil-lamp. They’re just about to have tea – the table’s groaning with cholesterol. Slabs of butter and jugs of creamy milk. Hot scones and home-made damson jam. Fresh steaming coffee in a big earthenware pot.’

  The wind seemed to have dropped, or moderated a little, even though the rain was still driving down. My hat was starting to wilt and my face was cold and wet. She plodded on beside me in silence, head bent inside the hood, arms tight against her body. She was quite tall, almost my height. A car or two went by, throwing up spray. I was beginning to enjoy my freedom. I didn’t even mind the chill rain.

  After about ten minutes I could see hazy lights ahead, surrounded by husks of yellow drizzle. As we got nearer she said, ‘Yes, I remember. There’s an inn about three miles from Keswick. I’m sure that’s it.’

  ‘I’m going to be disappointed if I don’t get hot buttered scones and damson jam,’ I said.

  ‘Who’d have known it. You do have a sense of humour.’

  ‘It comes and goes,’ I said.

  We approached a sign lit by three naked yellow bulbs swaying on a wire in the wind. The lettering was in badly formed Gothic script, the kind Tea Shoppes have in small market towns. It read: Craddock’s Coaching House.

  When I hesitated and hung back the hood turned towards me, her features pale and washed out in the yellow light. ‘Come on if you’re coming,’ she said impatiently.

  The building was low and squat and made of stone, bedded into the landscape. There were two large expensive-looking cars parked on the forecourt between diagonal white lines. A door inset with small panes of thick whorled glass led through a concrete porch into the main house. I followed her through and into the empty bar, rendered whitewashed walls with antique farm implements tacked to them, brasses on the mantel and low crooked black beams which seemed authentic. Narrow doorways and flagged passages gave onto other rooms and what appeared to be a small restaurant: gleaming cutlery and red-shaded table lamps reflecting on dark polished wood.

  ‘At least – thank God – we can have a drink.’ She unzipped her anorak and shrugged her head free. ‘Are you hungry? I’m starving.’

  I pulled my hat off. ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘But I’m not really …’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t be so coy.’ She sounded impatient again. ‘I can afford a meal and a couple of drinks.’

  ‘I do have money,’ I said, ‘I have to go easy, that’s all.’

  A large broad-shouldered man with a square ruddy face and quick impatient eyes appeared, dressed in a thick fisherman’s sweater with what looked like anchors woven into it. He was wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, still chewing and swallowing. It was early, and a filthy night, and plainly he wasn’t expecting anyone at this hour. She asked for the number of the nearest garage and the whereabouts of the phone. ‘Order a drink while I ring up,’ she said to me. Over her shoulder on her way out she saw the man’s eyes sweeping me up and down, almost with suspicion, and said brightly, ‘Mine’s the usual, darling. G & T, no lemon.’

  I took the drinks and sat in a corner. There was an open iron grate stacked with logs and kindling. The landlord was watching me, belching softly behind his napkin. He didn’t intend lighting it for my benefit, cold and rain-soaked as I was. His genuine customers in Prince of Wales check jackets with elbow patches and white polo-necked sweaters wouldn’t be arriving for at least an hour.

  When he saw that I wasn’t going to break up the furniture and piss on the carpet he went out. The sound of a radio drifted through: an announcer reading the news as if it were the end of the world and he’d told you so.

  I took my coat off. The shoulders of my jacket were damp where the moisture had started to seep through. Outside I could hear the wind threshing about; the low windows in deep embrasures were black rectangles, like blind eyes, reflecting the dim glow of the bar. I shivered slightly. It might have been the cold, but it was more probably fear.

  ‘They’re sending a man to take a look at it,’ she said, sitting opposite me on a padded stool. She held her head to one side and peered at me. ‘You’re shivering. Are you cold?’

  ‘I think I’ve caught a chill. Won’t they need the keys?’

  ‘There’s a spare set behind the sunblind thing. I’m always losing mine so I keep a set there. Why not have a brandy?’

  ‘I don’t think I will. Thanks.’

  ‘Please yourself.’ She took off her anorak and spread it over the back of a chair. She was wearing a rag-bag collection of garments underneath, a plaid shirt and a sleeveless pullover with a loose knitted waistcoat on top of that. Instead of making her appear fat, the layers of clothing emphasised how slim she was. Her neck was pale and long, the cords of musclature standing out whenever she turned her head. There were faint lines underneath and radiating outwards from her eyes that I now noticed, seeing her in a decent light for the first time.

  I asked her if the garage had said how long.

  ‘They haven’t a clue of course. They said to give them an hour and ring back.’ She sipped her drink, raising her fine dark eyebrows as if remembering something. She put her glass down. ‘I’m Diane Locke.’

  I shook her hand, which seemed to amuse her. ‘Holford.’

  ‘You’re very formal. What’s your first name?’

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Well, Peter,’ she smiled, wagging her head to and fro. ‘Sorry if I offended you – about being in prison. It was meant to be a joke, but not very funny. I say things first and regret them afterwards. My father says it will get me into trouble one of these days and I dare say he’s right.’

  ‘I
dare say. Why did you tell the policeman I was your brother?’

  ‘Well – it wasn’t you they were looking for. Was it?’

  ‘How do you know? I didn’t see anyone else hitching a lift.’

  She shrugged and smiled. She smiled easily, without strain or effort. Probably because she had good teeth. ‘Oh, it was just a feeling I had.’

  ‘Just a feeling,’ I said. ‘That’s quick. You must have known me for all of ten minutes.’

  ‘You might say it’s part of my job, instant character assessment. I’m a writer, a novelist. Though whether I’m any good at it remains to be seen.’ She looked round towards the bar. ‘God, I could eat something, couldn’t you? Do you think mine host is amenable?’

  She called to the landlord and he told us to go through into the restaurant. His wife would cook us something – they did grills and trout and sirloin steak. He even sounded vaguely apologetic that we might have to wait: ‘We don’t employ a chef off-season, it isn’t worth it. And everything is properly cooked, none of that microwave rubbish.’

  When it came the food was plain but cooked with care, and Diane Locke ordered a carafe of red wine to go with it. I went sparingly on that; I wasn’t used to alcohol and was already feeling the effect of one pint of beer. I wondered about the radio and whether anything had been said on the news. Where was S – now? I was certain I’d given him the slip. Almost two full days and he hadn’t caught up with me. Did he know I had come north? I didn’t think so, yet why did it continue to nag at me that possibly he did?

  To be polite I asked Diane Locke what kind of things she wrote. The only writer I’d ever known was somebody who was at school with me who became a journalist on the Manchester Evening News.

  ‘Two novels published and one in the pipeline. God, the first one was dreadful, I’m ashamed of it now, but I suppose we all have to start somewhere. It only sold twelve hundred copies, so that was a blessing, I suppose.’

  ‘What was the title?’

  ‘Need you ask? The Moon and Immortality.’ She winced. ‘I still wake up blushing in the middle of the night whenever I think about it.’

  The outer door opened and closed, footsteps rang on the tiles: a man’s tread and also mercifully a woman’s sharp heels. I listened to their footsteps ringing out and then suddenly muffled by the thick carpet as they went through to the bar, and it was a strain not to turn my head, even though I knew he would be alone. I ate some fried potatoes. ‘What’s the new one about?’

  ‘A married woman who has an affair with a married man, and when she finally makes up her mind to leave her husband she finds that the other man doesn’t want her, and neither, it turns out, does her husband. Sort of eternal triangle without the triangle.’

  ‘Sounds pretty bleak,’ I said.

  ‘It’s bleak all right.’ She picked up her glass and studied it. ‘I oughtn’t to be drinking this if I’m going to drive.’ She drank half of it.

  ‘How does it end?’

  ‘Dunno.’ She dabbed her lips. ‘It isn’t finished.’

  ‘Are you – married?’ I asked, as if the two things were connected.

  ‘I was. Not now. I’ve been divorced three years. I have two children both away at school, which he pays for – Desmond, my ex-husband – I couldn’t afford it.’ She speared a piece of fish and looked at me over the red glow of the lamp. ‘They won’t come in here.’

  ‘What – who won’t?’ I said.

  ‘The police.’ She tilted her head a fraction. ‘When the door opened just now you froze.’

  ‘It isn’t the police I’m bothered about.’

  I could hear the landlord greeting his new customers, who by the sound of it were regulars. Very gradually I could feel the stiffness and tension draining out of my spine, as if I’d been injected with anaesthetic. My head was swimming a little. The night before I had slept four hours, five at the most, and those in uncomfortable circumstances. All at once I felt very sleepy, as if someone had thrown a warm fluffy blanket over my shoulders.

  She leaned across the table and whispered melodramatically, ‘A woman, then – or her husband?’

  When I didn’t reply straight away she said, ‘Shut up, Diane, mind your own business. You’re absolutely right, don’t answer. I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry.’

  ‘I owe you some sort of explanation,’ I murmured.

  ‘You don’t owe me anything. I’ll forget about it if you will. Are you married, Peter? Or is that prying too?’

  ‘I have been married. I mean, I was married …’ Then I thought: the truth can’t hurt, and said, ‘My wife is dead.’ It came out brutally, like an electric shock, and it did hurt. ‘She was killed in an accident. They called it misadventure. Quaint,’ I said bitterly, ‘some of the phrases they use.’

  We dropped the subject, or rather Diane Locke chose not to pursue it. Some other people came in. They all seemed to know one another, shared a private language. There was laughter and some unfunny ribald remarks. To them this was a normal, average evening, in familiar surroundings, spent in the company of friends. They had homes and families waiting for them; they had destinations.

  To me this was a lonely pub in the middle of nowhere on a windy rainswept night, my destination somewhere out there in the wind and rain.

  Diane Locke went to call the garage, came back and topped up the glasses and drank most of hers. ‘A mechanic’s been to look at it but there’s nothing he can do. They’ll tow it in in the morning. Something about a bearing.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s kaput. Have to send off to Walsall or Tokyo or somewhere.’

  3

  It’s a popular misconception that a breakdown happens instantaneously. Crack! – like a fissure shearing through an ice-floe. One day (so the theory goes) you’re in one solid piece, smiling at the world, coping with your job, carrying on as normal, and the next you’re a white-faced shaking blob of jelly, a gibbering wreck. It doesn’t happen like that. What actually happens is that you carry the smile around with you on a stick, you ‘cope’ with your job, you behave as any normal person would, but with each day that passes you’re wearing yourself to a finer and finer point, like the sharp, brittle point of a pencil. And then what happens is that one ordinary day, simply and undramatically, you snap.

  People say, ‘Amazing. He changed overnight – just like that!’ What they’ve seen is the surface fissure, cracking your personality in two. What they haven’t seen are the stresses and tensions and slow grinding forces at work underneath, and they haven’t seen these because you’ve taken immense pains to keep the facade intact. You’ve carried the smile on a stick around with you, pretending to hear and comprehend what people are saying to you, and you’ve mouthed words back at them. The months after Susan died remained a blur to me even now, a blank on the map. I must have soldiered bravely on, I supposed. I was very brave. Everyone must have thought I had come to terms with my grief, and it came as a shock to them when the pencil point broke without any warning. Snapped clean off.

  Even then it was a quiet break. No histrionics. All very civilised. At least that’s how I remember it, from what I do remember. I think I sat in a chair a lot and didn’t move. There was no reason to. Well, yes, I suppose there were reasons to move, to act, to live, but they had ceased to have any significance.

  We each of us invent our own version of the truth. I had invented a brother who didn’t exist because I had to have a purpose for my journey, to explain my presence to her, and it just popped out, a harmless little lie, as they sometimes do when we’re trapped in a situation.

  Diane Locke struck me as an unusual woman. Had she really no qualms at all about picking up a hitch-hiker on a country road at nightfall? Maybe that’s how she dealt with life, boldly and directly and on her own terms, blithely ignoring the screaming banner headlines and paranoid television documentaries about the millions of rapist murderers roaming the land. I envied that boldness, that strength, if that’s what it was. She had told me she
was divorced, and I had the impression she was unattached, and I suppose I was attracted to her. In a foolish fantasy, brought on by tiredness and wine, I pictured the two of us, stranded here together, upstairs in one of the bedrooms of Craddock’s Coaching House, lying back on a rumpled bed after making love and looking at the sloping plaster ceiling and warped black beams curving down over the attic window. We could hear the rush and splash of cars in the rain and dark outside. She told me all about her sad life and I told her all about mine. Such things do happen, and not only in books, but needless to say this didn’t. She rang a taxi firm in Keswick and they sent out a car.

  Going up the three carpeted steps into the bar I stupidly stumbled in my clumsy boots and lurched against a broad back in a tweed jacket. The owner of the broad back happened to have a pint to his mouth, and he swung round, spluttering, a fringe of foam on his brown moustache, lager dripping from his chin. A woman’s voice said tartly, ‘Heavens, now they let tramps in here,’ and there was a ponderous silence.

  ‘Are you damn well drunk? the man asked, making it sound like leprosy. He was over six feet tall, built like a rugby player, his wet fingers wrapped round the pint glass, which was almost empty.

  I tried to say it was my fault, and how sorry I was, and perhaps I slurred my words, or it could have been my appearance that outraged him.

  ‘I’ll say it was your bloody fault, of course it was. Look at my bloody shirt, you bloody imbecile. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘He smells,’ the woman’s voice said. ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘Say you’re sorry.’

  ‘I’ve said it.’

  The man pushed me in the chest. ‘Get out! You’re a bloody menace.’

  ‘I did apologise. It was an accident.’

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ one of the man’s male companions asked rudely. ‘Find yourself a doss-house.’ The woman shrieked with laughter and covered her mouth.

  I had some loose change in my pocket. I fumbled for it, intending to pay for his drink, and the other man said, ‘Watch it, Kev, he’s going for his knife.’