Blood Worm

12

Dorothea stood on top of the step- ladder, poking her head through the hatch leading into the loft. A strong smell of insecticide was evidence that Guy must have splashed a lot of it about up there. The real problem, she decided, was to judge how thoroughly he’d inspected the timbers before treating them. As she flashed the torch around she could almost hear her father’s voice again. ‘Depends on the condition o’ the wood, lass,’ was his usual refrain when asked how long a job might take. The men used to laugh about it behind his back. ‘Ol condition-o’-the-wood Cunningham,’ she’d heard one of them call him, laughing.

Funny or not, she could do with his help now, she thought as she climbed down. That Soft wasn’t something she’d like to tackle on her own, nor the rest of the house, come to that. If he hadn’t died when he did, she could have given him a ring and…

But then she wouldn’t have had the house anyway, not without the money he left her.

‘Has to be done though, somehow,’ she told herself firmly as she replaced the hatch and came down the step-ladder again. ‘By just me an’ Guy if necessary. Hell, I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

Merely hoisting herself up on to that step-ladder had left her out of puff. Too much weight on her, that was a fact. She’d tried everything she knew just to lose a few' pounds but nothing worked. Month after month she seemed to put on a iitde more; the bathroom scales bore brutal witness, and so did her own eyes when she examined herself in the full-length mirror. She was going the same way as her mother, and that really was a depressing thought.

‘ ’Bout time I stopped talking to myself too,’ she said aloud as she went downstairs back to the telephone. ‘That’s a barmy habit if there ever was one. Wonder if Guy ever talks to himself? Bet he doesn’t. God, he bores me sometimes!’

The Yellow Pages still lay open, as she’d left it, at the list of contractors specialising in timber pests, though she’d already put a cross by most of them, having drawn a blank earlier in the morning. Two or three months was the shortest waiting time she’d been quoted; when she’d suggested they might come the same day they had merely laughed.

‘Seen the papers this morning, darling?’ one had sneered at her in a high-pitched nasal voice, which had raised her hackles right away. ‘You’re lucky we’re even answering the blower. Lots of firms aren’t bothering.’ She’d told him — politely enough — to get stuffed, and then she’d gone on to the next, but with much the same result.

Now, taking her ball-point in her hand, she carried on down the list. Several seemed to be permanently engaged, one offered a recorded voice suggesting that she should ring again later, and the rest informed her bluntly that they didn’t want the work.

And that, it seemed, was that. She had no alternative but to ask Brian and Pete. Perhaps if she offered to pay them, they might…

‘Damn!’ she swore, putting the phone down. ‘Damn and blast it!’

Whoever did the work, she realised, it was going to undo all the effort she’d put into getting the house straight. Guy had already made a hell of a mess of the front room; when she’d seen it last night she’d been furious, and she’d have told him about it in no uncertain terms if she hadn’t already heard some news about the beetle attacks from her minicab driver. Plus the message from the Armstrong woman on her answering machine; that voice had reaiiy sounded scared.

Right, Brian and Pete then, she thought; and she could use a drink. She wasn’t thinking straight any longer.

Slipping on her raincoat, she locked up the house and made a beeline for the Plough. What she’d do without that pub she just didn’t know, but then she’d always liked the atmosphere of a good pub. It was one of the things she’d missed on overseas postings.

Not many people in yet, she noticed as she let the door swing shut behind her, and she stood for a moment looking round. No sign of Pete, but Brian was behind the bar. That was something. She went over to claim her usual comer bar-stool.

'Gin and tonic, Brian. Please.’

‘Thea, sweetie! What happened to you last night? You weren’t in.’

‘No, I got back late.’

‘Oh! All right for some. Seen the papers?’

‘Brian, if anybody else asks this morning have I seen the papers,’ she answered heavily, Til throw up.’

‘Oh, you. are in a mood, aren’t you? One gin and tonic coming up! Large one?’

‘Small.’

‘Don’t tell me! You’ve got a hangover.’

‘It’s a busy day. Don’t want to get tiddly,’ she said. ‘Talk about it later.’

‘Be like that!’ He turned away to draw a pint for a thickset grey-haired man in a donkey jacket, a regular she knew only by sight. When he came back to her, he said seriously: ‘These big snake things are no joke, are they? What do they call them? Bloodworms? What does Guy think now he’s been proved right?’

‘Hasn’t said.’ She sipped her drink. ‘But now we have to spray the house. I tried every firm in the Yellow Pages this morning but none of them want to do it.’

‘People’ll be queueing up.’

‘Fra hoping you an’ Pete can help me out. Not as a favour; I mean, there’ll be something in it for you. Can’t expect you to do it for nothing.’

‘Don’t know, sweetie. Have to ask him first. We’re run off our feet here today. Janet’s not come in. The landlord was saying she lives down in Miller Road. That’s one of the places where there was trouble last night, but nobody’s heard anything.’

‘Who’s going to do the food then?’

‘Looks like muggins. Thea, darling, you couldn’t do a turn behind the bar, could you? You’ve done it once before. Should I ask the landlord what he thinks?’

Joe Hanson, the landlord of the Plough, was a burly man with handlebar moustaches, no longer young, who could usually be found reading Sporting Life in the far comer of the saloon, his Labrador at his feet and a half-pint of bitter in front of him. He seldom worked behind the bar, save in the early evening when some of his bookie friends dropped in; on this occasion, his flushed face damp with sweat, he was carrying in the shepherd’s pie fresh from the oven. Cursing, he dumped it down on the hotplate.

‘The bar, love?’ he puffed, mopping his face with the oven cloth. ‘Know the prices? No, ’course you don’t. They’ve gone up since you last did it. I’ll take you on in Janet’s place, though. Pay you for two hours. That’s fair enough, innit? Plus your lunch if anything’s left over.’

Catching Brian’s eye, Dorothea felt she had to agree. There was no other way she was going to get help with spraying the house. She hung up her raincoat and tied one of Janet’s short aprons round her waist while the landlord went through the price list with her. Not that she didn’t know it practically by heart anyway.

‘Anything you need, just—’ He stopped as his eye lit on the pickle jar, which was practically empty. ‘Like pickled onions, for instance. On the shelf in the cellar you’ll find them. I’ll take you down there and show you the book. When you’ve taken something from stock, always enter it in the book.’

He led her through the door at the rear of the food bar, then down a flight of narrow stone steps, which he took one by one. For the first time she realised he was lame. At the bottom he paused to switch on the lights. Beetles had been found down here too, she remembered, as she looked around the eerie place.

A large area of the cellar was taken up by wooden beer barrels and metal kegs serving the bar immediately above, and she found her eyes drawn to the deep shadows between them. She had an uneasy sense that there must be insects lurking there, waiting for their prey. The pale daylight filtering in down the chute from the street revealed a tangle of old, dust-laden cobwebs. No spiders though, and that fact did nothing to reassure her.

‘Are you sure this place is safe?’ She hadn’t meant to use quite those words; they’d just slipped out.

‘Safe?’ A heavy timber partition divided one end of the cellar from the rest; set in it were two doors, and he’d been explaining that the right-hand one belonged to the foodstore. ‘Oh, beetles, you mean? No need to worry on that Score. After Janet found those two, we cleared everything out and had the place fumigated. Haven’t seen any insects here since then.’

He unlocked the door to reveal the wide, slotted timber shelves of the foodstore.

‘Anything to do with food, always take immediate action. Don’t want any trouble with the inspectors, not in a place like this. Could ruin business.’

‘It doesn’t scare you, what’s happening? Since this morning it scares me. Beetles, snakes, buildings collapsing..

‘Get out of London if you feel like that.’

‘And leave the house? Oh, I couldn’t.’

‘Right, do me one favour then,’ the landlord snapped irritably as he turned from the shelves clutching a large jar of pickled onions. ‘Don’t talk to the customers like that. They come into a pub to forget their worries for a while, not to have them rammed down their throats. So stay off beetles, d’you hear?’

Tm not daft!’ she retorted. ‘Give me the pickles an’ I’ll get started.’

Customers were already waiting at the food bar when she got back upstairs and from then on she was not given a minute to herself. It was the usual business crowd, including several she’d seen in the Plough before, but the atmosphere seemed both subdued and apprehensive. No relaxed chatter today, no sudden outbursts of laughter, but a definite mood of fear had seized them. A few asked after Janet, but Dorothea merely replied that she was off sick; none pursued the subject any farther. It was as if they would prefer not to know.

From the snatches of conversation she caught, it was only too clear what they were talking about. The words bloodworm, snakes, and beetles occurred again and again, and three times she overheard people discussing whether it wasn’t too much of a risk coming into the

Worth Road district at all, let alone to the Plough, which was an old building. Hadn’t most of the attacks so far involved old buildings?

The crush was already beginning to thin out and only sandwiches were left when, over the shoulder of the customer she was serving, she saw a young, well-dressed man in a business suit push his way in excitedly, shouting something which she didn’t quite hear. He was heading towards people he knew at one of the tables, but others crowded around him, questioning him.

‘What’s all that about?’ she asked the customer. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘Make it two rounds of ham, then.’

She fixed two rounds of ham sandwiches and cut through them diagonally, then took his money. As she dropped it into the dll Pete came by, dressed as usual in his dark leather blouson and open-necked shirt, looking as though he never did a day’s work.

‘Hear that, Thea? Link Lane station’s closed because of bloodworms. Really big bastards, they say. You can’t get near the place for ambulances, but most o’ the people are still down there. It’s slaughter.’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ What else could she say? ‘Oh, my God.’ The customer was still standing there spreading mustard on his sandwiches. ‘It’s not just rumour?’

‘Go an’ ask him,’ Pete said. ‘That feller who’s jus’ come in.’

‘Get me a drink, Pete. Anything. Oh, I just don’t know what to think.’

‘Proves your of man knew what he was on about. Somebody shoulda listened to him.’

‘They wouldn’t believe him. None of us did. We might have been able to prevent it.’ She stood there, too shocked to do anything any more.

‘Drink,’ said Pete, and elbowed his way to the bar.

He brought her a large gin and tonic, and asked in that concerned, sympathetic way of his whether she was feeling all right. She looked pale, he said. Making some excuse about having had a late night, she gulped the gin down. What the hell, she thought, hadn’t it been obvious from the start that the attacks were going to get worse? That was something they’d have to learn to live with. The first essential was to get Brian and Pete to help spray the house, and then perhaps she should take Kath down to her sister’s in Dorset, just to be on the safe side.

‘You must’ve needed that,’ Pete commented cheerfully, picking up her empty glass. ‘Refill?’

‘My turn,’ she objected.

‘Oh, we’ll settle up later! Same again?’ But he didn’t wait for her answer.

The news about the tube station left most customers in the Plough talking in subdued voices. Quite a few slipped away, and none of those who remained showed any more interest in her food, though orders for drinks were still brisk. After a time the landlord instructed her to close up; extracting notes from the till, he paid for her two hours’ work, gruffly thanking her.

‘Did Brian ask you about helping me spray the house?’ she asked Pete, joining him at the bar.

‘No sweat,’ he said easily. ‘For you, darling, I’d do anything.’

‘Idiot!’ she retorted, her mood suddenly lightened. ‘Anyway, I owe you a drink, don’t I?’

‘Two.’

She took one of the notes the landlord had pushed into her hand and bought a round for the three of them, though Brian said he’d drink his later.

‘Have you noticed, sweetie? Practically everyone’s drinking spirits. That’s since we heard about Link Lane, that is. And those ambulances just haven’t stopped!’

Another siren wailed from the road outside. God knew how many that made — she’d hardly noticed them, being so sunk in her own problems.

‘From the glum looks on their faces you’d think it was the end of the world,’ she said, meaning the customers. ‘Maybe it is. Who knows?’

'At the last it bitetb like a serpent and stingeth like an adder,' Brian responded, busily washing glasses as he spoke. ‘From the Bible, sweetie. When I was on remand I shared a cell with this vicar who was in for touching up little boys. Always repeating that, he was.’

‘You were in prison?’ She was both shocked and intrigued.

‘Oh, no need to get your tights in a tangle. Jury found me not guilty. Ask me, the police weren’t even trying to track down the right person. Picked me up because I was handy.’

It was turning into a regular drinking session, she knew; but, hell, would they even be alive tomorrow? Someone else came into the Plough with more news of the Link Lane disaster; simply hearing about it seemed to drain all the will-power out of her. She’d learned more about herself in the past twelve hours than she’d ever thought possible. At breakfast with Guy she’d been so high, it was unbelievable; a nervous reaction, of course — she recognised that; afterwards came the plunge into the depths. Now she didn’t know where she was.

At closing time Pete said he’d check the house over to see what was needed. She retrieved her raincoat, managed to get it on unaided and left the pub with him, having extracted a promise from Brian that he would follow them as soon as he’d finished clearing up. Two fire engines were speeding noisily along Worth Road in the Link Lane direction and a helicopter circled overhead. She found herself wishing she and Pete hadn’t drunk so much. Brian was the only completely sober one of the three.

‘That's a right ravioli, innit?’ Pete observed when he saw the state of the front room. ‘Think o’ the hours we spent paintin’ this room, an’ now look at it! A right ravioli.’

‘I don’t know what he’s sprayed an’ what he hasn’t,’ she declared. ‘Same upstairs in the loft.’

‘Let’s have a peek. But it looks like we’d best do the lot. Not that I’m saying’ anything against your husband’s work.’

She laughed as she caught his grin. ‘Poor Guy, he tries.’

Turning, she stumbled over the spraying equipment, which still lay where Guy had left it in the middle of the floor. Pete’s arm steadied her and, still laughing, she found his face close to hers. Their lips met — at first lightly but then, as her hand slipped behind his shoulder to hold him closer, starting to explore and savour. Sensually.

‘The loft,’ she said at last, and broke away from him. ‘This wasn’t what I had in mind.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘No!’ She was firm.

On the stairs she stumbled again, but this time clumsily turned her head to avoid another kiss. They continued up to the first landing with his arm around her; then, as she opened her mouth to explain about the step-ladder, he kissed her again. She struggled, but half-heartedly, giggling, and tried pushing him away.

‘Oh, get off!’ But she didn’t mean it; she was fighting against herself more than him. ‘Brian’ll be here any minute.’

‘He’ll be ages. These rooms need doing as well, don’t they?’

‘All of them,’ she said, ‘but—’

Already he had opened the nearest door, the one leading into her bedroom. Inside, he stopped in admiration. ‘Like a film star’s! Design all this yourself, did you? You could do this professionally, you know. Make a mint o’ money.’

‘The spraying’s going to make a mess of it, isn’t it?’

‘The carpet’ll have to come up.’

‘The bathroom, too. It’s a wooden floor under those tiles. Oh, God, why did this have to happen to ruin everything?’

She held him close but with her head turned away, not wanting him to notice that her eyes were wet, but placing his finger under her chin he gently raised her mouth to Ills. Their kiss was long, at first quiet and comforting, but then growing increasingly more urgent, their tongues darting at each other, teasing, daring… He slipped the raincoat off her shoulders and draped it over the chair, then dropped his own leather jacket on top of it. Next her sweater, sliding his hard hands beneath it, caressing her bare skin and still kissing her as slowly he eased it over her breasts and helped her out of it.

The tattoo over his stomach shocked her back to her senses — a flower design, in itself harmless, but what was she doing naked on her own bed with a man who’d had himself decorated in this way, vandalising his body? But by then it was too late to draw back. She felt his weight as he shifted on to her, and his leg pressing between here; yes, and hers parting willingly because she wanted him, hungered for him, tattoo or not.

In those moments it didn’t even matter to her who he was. His body was hard and muscular, serving her purposes, arousing her to.. to…

Oh no, he was going on. He wasn’t finished yet. Oh, my God, it’s not over. Please God it’s not over.

Dorothea awoke with a start at the sound of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs — light, mincing footsteps. Brian, she thought, horrified. Brian! But how the hell did he get into the house?

She was lying naked on the bed with Pete next to her, flat on his back, snoring, and that hateful tattoo above his navel trembling each time he breathed in. The duvet! She reached for something to cover herself, but it was all in a heap on the floor, everything tangled up together. As she scrambled for her robe, a sharp pain hit her behind the eyes. They’d fallen asleep, she realised through her panic; now she’d woken up with a headache, a dry mouth, a beast of a hangover!

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

‘Brian! Stay out!’ she shouted, desperately trying to disentangle the robe. But she heard the doorknob turning hesitantly. ‘Brian — no!’

Slowly the door opened and Kath stood there, wide-eyed. She was in her school clothes with her bag over her shoulder. A ribbon held her long hair back from her face. Her expression was grave, like marble, as she understood what she was witnessing.

Kath’s hand had never left the doorknob. Before Dorothea could say anything — could even think of anything to say — she had backed quietly out and closed the door behind her. Then came the rapid sound of her footsetps as she ran downstairs, and the slamming of the front door, which echoed through the entire house.