Echo

*11*

Terry was put out to discover that his clothes were still wet when he finally stumbled out of his bedroom in an old T-shirt and shorts of Deacon's, rubbing his shaven head and yawning sleep away. "I can't go out in your god-awful stuff, Mike. I mean I've got a reputation to consider. Know what I'm saying? You'll have to go shopping on your own while I wait for this lot to dry."

"Okay." Deacon consulted his watch. "I'd better get moving then, or I'll miss the chance to break Hugh's nose."

"You really going to do that?"

"Sure. I was also planning to buy you some new gear for a Christmas present, but if you're not there to try it on-" he shrugged. "I'll get you some reading books instead."

Terry was back, fully dressed, in under three minutes. "Where did you put my coat?"

"I chucked it in the bin downstairs while you were having your bath."

"What you want to do that for?"

"It had Walter's blood all over it." He took a Barbour from a hook on the wall. "You can borrow this till we buy you a new one."

"I can't wear that," said Terry in disgust, refusing to take it. "Jesus, Mike, I'll look like one of those poncy gits who drive around in Range Rovers. Supposing we meet someone I know?"

"Frankly," growled Deacon, "I'm more concerned about meeting someone I know. I haven't worked out yet how to explain why a foulmouthed, shaven-headed thug is-A-staying in my flat and-B-wearing my clothes."

Terry put on the Barbour with bad grace. "Considering how much of my puff you smoked last night you ought to be in a better mood."

Barry lay in bed and listened to his mother's heavy tread on the stairs. He held his breath while she held hers on the other side of his door. "I know you're awake," she said in the strangulated voice that seemed to start somewhere in her fat stomach and squeeze up out of her blubbery mouth. The door handle rattled. "Why have you locked the door?" The voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "If you're playing with yourself again, Barry, I'll find out."

He didn't answer, only stared at the door while his fingers gripped and squeezed her imaginary neck. He fantasized about how easy it would be to kill her and hide her body somewhere out of sight-in the front parlor, perhaps, where it could sit for months on end with no visitors to disturb it. Why should someone so unlovely and unloved be allowed to live? And who would miss her?

Not her son...

Barry fumbled for his glasses and brought his world back into focus. He noticed with alarm that his hands were trembling again.

>

"Why haven't you ever been arrested?" asked Deacon as Terry selected a pair of Levi's, saying they'd be "a doddle to nick." (He made a habit of locating security cameras and staying blind side of them, Deacon noticed.)

"What makes you think I ain't?"

"You'd have been sent back into care."

The boy shook his head. "Not unless I told them the truth about myself, which I ain't never done. Sure I've been arrested, but I was always with old Billy when it happened so he took the rap. He reckoned I'd have trouble with poofs if I went into an adult prison or be sent back to the shirt-lifter if I gave my right age, so it were him what did the time and not me." His gaze shifted restlessly about the shop. "How about a jacket, then? They're on the far side." He set off purposefully.

Deacon followed behind. Were all adolescents so ruthlessly self-centered? He had an unpleasant picture of this terrible child latching on to protectors like a leech in order to suck them dry, and he realized that Lawrence's advice ibout keeping one step ahead was about as useful as pissing p the wind. Any halfway decent man with a sense of moral duty was putty in Terry's hands, he thought.

"I like this one," said Terry, taking a dark work jacket off a coathanger and thrusting his arms into the sleeves. "What d'you think?"

"It's about ten times too big for you."

"I'm still growing."

"I'm damned if I'll be seen walking around with a mobile Barrage balloon."

"You ain't got the first idea of fashion, have you? Everyone wears things big these days." He tried the next size down. "Tight stuff's what guys like you pranced around in n the seventies, along with flares and beads and long hair and that. Billy said it was good to be young then, but I reckon you must've looked like a load of poofs."

Deacon lifted his lip in a snarl. "Well, you've got nothing to worry about then," he said. "You look like a paid-up member of the National Front."

"I ain't got a problem with that." Terry looked pleased with himself.

Barry stood in the doorway and watched the back of his mother's head where she was slumped on a chair in front of the television, her feet propped on a stool. Sparse, bristly hair poked out of her pink scalp and cavernous snores roared from her mouth. The untidy room smelled of her farts, and a sense of injustice overwhelmed him. It was a cruel fate that had taken his father and left him to the mercies of a ... his fingers flexed involuntarily ... PIG!

Terry found a shop that was selling Christmas decorations and posters. He selected a reproduction of Picasso's Woman in a Chemise and insisted Deacon buy it.

"Why that one?'' Deacon asked him.

"She's beautiful."

It was certainly a beautiful painting, but whether or not the woman herself was beautiful depended on taste. It marked the transition between Picasso's blue and rose periods, so the subject had the cold, emaciated melancholy of the earlier period enlivened by the pink and ochre hues of the later. "Personally, I prefer a little more flesh," said Deacon, "but I'm happy to have her on my wall."

"Billy drew her more than anyone else," said Terry surprisingly.

"On the pavements?"

"No, on the bits of paper we used to burn afterwards. He copied her off of a postcard to begin with, but he got so good at it that he could do her out of his head in the end." He traced his finger along the clear lines of the woman's profile and torso. "See, she's real simple to draw. Like Billy said, there's no mess in this picture."

"Unlike the Leonardo?"

"Yeah."

It was true, thought Deacon. Picasso's woman was glorious in her simplicity-and so much more delicate than da Vinci's plumper Madonna. "Maybe you should become an artist, Terry. You seem to have an eye for a good painting."

"I've been up Green Park once or twice to look at the stuff on the railings, but that's crap. Billy always said he'd take me to a proper gallery, but he never got round to it. They probably wouldn't've let us in anyway, not with Billy roaring drunk most of the time." He was flicking through the poster rack. "What d'you reckon to this? You reckon this painter saw hell the same way Billy's lady did? Like being alone and afraid in a place that doesn't make sense to you?" -M-yi0* *

He had pulled out Edvard Munch's The Scream, with its powerful, twisted imagery of a man screaming in terror before the elemental forces of nature. "You really do have an eye." said Deacon in admiration. "Did Billy draw this one as well?"

"No, he wouldn't have liked it. There's too much red in it. He hated red because it reminded him of blood."

"Well, I'm not having that on my wall or I'll think about hell every time I look at it." And blood, he thought. He wished he and Billy had less in common.

They settled on reproductions of the Picasso (for its simplicity), Manet's Luncheon in the Studio (for its harmonious symmetry-"that one works real good," said Terry), Hi-jronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (for its color and interest-"it's well brilliant," said Terry), and anally Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (for its perfection in every respect-"Shit!" said Terry. "That's one beautiful picture.")

"What happened to Billy's postcard of the Picasso?" asked Deacon as he was paying.

"Tom burnt it."

"Why?"

"Because he was well out of order. He and Billy were drunk as lords, and they'd been having a row about women. Tom said Billy was too ugly ever to've had one, and Billy said he couldn't be as ugly as Tom's missus or Tom wouldn't've walked out on her. Everyone laughed and Tom was gutted."

"What did that have to do with the postcard?''

"Nothing much, except Billy really loved it. He kissed it sometimes when he was drunk. Tom was that riled at having his missus insulted, he went for something he knew'd send Billy mad. It worked, too. Billy damn near throttled Tom for burning it, then he burst into tears and said truth was dead anyway so nothing mattered anymore. And that were the end of it."

It was six years since Deacon had last visited the Red Lion. It had been his local when he and Julia had lived in Fulham, and Hugh had been in the habit of meeting him there a couple of times a month on his way home to Putney. The outside had changed very little over the years, and Deacon half-expected to find the same landlord and the same regulars inside when he pushed open the doors. But it was a room full of strangers, where the only recognizable face was Hugh's. He was sitting at a table in the far corner, and he raised a tentative hand in greeting when he saw Deacon.

"Hello, Michael," he said, standing up as they approached. "I wasn't sure if you'd come."

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world. It might be the only chance I ever get to flatten you." He beckoned Terry forward. "Meet Terry Dalton. He's staying with me for Christmas. Terry, meet Hugh Tremayne, my brother-in-law."

Terry gave his amiable grin and stuck out a bony hand. "Hi. How'ya doing?"

Hugh looked surprised but shook the offered hand. "Very well, thank you. Are we-er--related?"

Terry appraised his round face and overweight figure. "I don't reckon so, not unless you were putting it about a bit in Birmingham fifteen years ago. Nah," he said. "I think my dad was probably a bit taller and thinner. No offense meant, of course."

Deacon gave a snort of laughter. "I think Hugh was wondering if you were related to my second wife, Terry."

"Oh, right. Why didn't he say that, then?"

Deacon turned to the wall and banged his head against it for several seconds. Finally, he took a deep breath, mopped his eyes with his handkerchief, and faced the room again. "It's a touchy subject," he explained. "My family didn't like Clara very much."

"What was wrong with her?"

"Nothing," said Hugh firmly, afraid that Deacon was going to embarrass him and Terry with references to tarts and slots. "What are you both having? Lager?'' He escaped to the bar while they divested themselves of their coats and sat down.

"You can't hit him,'" said Terry. "Okay, he's a pillock, but he's about six inches shorter than you and ten years older. What did he do, anyway?"

Deacon propped his feet on a chair and placed his hands behind his head. "He insulted me in my mother's house and then ordered me out of it." He smiled slightly. "I swore I'd deck him the next time I saw him, and this is the next time."

"Well, I wouldn't do it if I were you. It don't make you any bigger, you know. I felt well gutted after what I did to Billy." He nodded his thanks as Hugh returned with their drinks.

There was a painful silence while Hugh sought for something to say and Deacon grinned at the ceiling, thoroughly enjoying his brother-in-law's discomfort.

Terry offered Hugh a cigarette which he refused. "Maybe if you apologized, he'd forget the beating," he suggested, lighting his own cigarette. "Billy always said it were harder to hit someone you'd had a natter with. That's why guys who do violence tell people to keep their mouths shut. They're scared shitless of losing their bottle."

"Who's Billy?"

"An old geezer I used to know. He reckoned talking was better than fighting, then he'd get rat-arsed and start attacking people. Mind, he were a bit of a nutter, so you couldn't blame him. His advice was good, though."

"Stop meddling, Terry," said Deacon mildly. "I want some answers before we get anywhere near an apology." He lowered his feet from the chair and leaned across the table. "What's going on, Hugh? Why am I so popular suddenly?"

Hugh took a mouthful of lager while he weighed up his answer. "Your mother isn't well," he said carefully.

"So Emma told me."

"And she's keen to bury the hatchet with you."

"Really?" He reached for the cigarette packet. "Would that explain the daily phone messages at my office?"

Hugh looked surprised. "Has she?"

"No, of course she hasn't. I haven't heard a word from her in five years, not since she accused me of killing my father. Which is odd, don't you think, if she wants to bury the hatchet?" He bent his head to the match.

"You know your mother as well as I do." Hugh sighed. "In sixteen years I've never heard her admit being wrong about anything, and I can't see her starting now. I'm afraid you're expected to make the first move."

Deacon's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "This isn't what Ma wants, is it? It's what Emma wants. Is she feeling guilty about stripping Ma of her capital? Is that what this is about?"

Hugh toyed unhappily with his beer glass. "Frankly, I've had about as much of your family squabbles as I can take, Michael. It's like living in the middle of a war zone being married to a Deacon."

Deacon gave a low chuckle. "Be grateful you weren't around when my father was alive then. It was worse." He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray. "You might as well spit it out. I'm not going anywhere near Ma unless I know why Emma wants me to."

Again, Hugh appeared to weigh his answer. "Oh, to hell with it!" he said abruptly. "Your father did make a new will. Emma found it, or should I say the pieces, when she was sorting through your mother's things while she was in the hospital. She asked us to pay her bills and keep everything ticking over while she was off games. I suppose she'd forgotten that the will was still sitting there although why she didn't burn it or throw it away-" He gave a hollow laugh. "We stuck it back together again. His first two bequests were made out of duty. He left the cottage in Cornwall to Penelope, plus enough investments to provide her with an income of ten thousand a year, and he left Emma a lump sum of twenty thousand. The third bequest was made out of love. He left you the farmhouse and the residue of the estate because, and I quote, 'Michael is the only member of my family who cares whether I live or die.' He made it two weeks before he shot himself, and we assume it was your mother who tore it up as she's the only one who benefited under the old will."

Deacon smoked thoughtfully for a moment or two. "Did he appoint David and Harriet Price as executors?''

"Yes."

"Well, at least that vindicates poor old David." He thought back to the furious row his mother had had with their then next-door neighbors when David Price had dared to suggest that Francis Deacon had talked about making a new will with him as executor. "Show it to me," she had said, "tell me what's in it." And David had had to admit that he had never seen it, only agreed in principle to act as executor should Francis revoke his previous will. "Who drew it up?"

"We think your father did it himself. It's in his handwriting."

"Is it legal?"

"A solicitor friend of ours says it's properly worded and properly witnessed. The witnesses were two of the librarians in Bedford general library. Our friend's only caveat was whether your father was in sound mind when he made it, bearing in mind he shot himself two weeks later." He shrugged. "But, according to Emma, he had been right as rain for months prior to his suicide and only became really depressed the day before he pulled the trigger."

Deacon glanced at Terry, who was wide-eyed with curiosity. "It's a long story," he said, "which you don't want to hear."

"You can shorten it, can't you? I mean, you know all about me. Seems only fair I should know a bit about you."

It was on the tip of Deacon's tongue to say he didn't even know what Terry's real name was, but he decided against it. "My father was a manic depressive. He was supposed to take drugs to control the condition, but he wasn't very reliable and the rest of us suffered." He saw that Terry didn't understand. "Manic depression is typified by mood swings. You can be high as a kite in a manic phase-it's a bit like being stoned-and suicidal in a depressed phase." He drew on his cigarette then ground the butt out under his heel. "On Christmas Day, nineteen seventy-six, while depressed, my father put his shotgun in his mouth at four o'clock in the morning and blew his head away." He smiled slightly. "It was very quick, very loud, and very messy, and it's why I try to forget that Christmas even exists."

Terry was impressed. "Shit!" he said.

"It's also why Emma and Michael are so difficult to live with," said Hugh dryly. "They're both scared to death they've inherited manic depression, which is why they resist feeling happy about anything and view mild unhappiness as the onset of clinical depression."

"It's in the genes, then, is it? Billy were big on genes. He always said you couldn't escape what your parents programmed into you."

"No, it's not in the genes," said Hugh crossly. "There's evidence suggesting hereditary predisposition, but innumerable other factors would have to come into play to precipitate the same condition in Emma and Michael as occurred in Francis."

Deacon laughed. "That means I'm not a nutter yet," he told Terry. "Hugh's a civil servant so he likes to be precise in his definitions."

Terry frowned. "Yeah, but why'd your mother accuse you of killing your dad if he topped himself?"

Deacon drank his lager in silence.

"Because she's a bitch," said Hugh flatly.

Deacon stirred himself, "She said it because it's true. He told me at eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve that he wanted to die, and I gave him the go-ahead to do it. Five hours later, he was dead. My mother thinks I should have persuaded him out of it."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because he asked me not to."

"Yeah, but-" The boy's puzzled eyes searched Deacon's face. "Didn't you mind if he died? I was well gutted every time Billy tried to hurt himself. I mean you feel responsible like."

Deacon held his gaze for a moment then looked down at his glass. "It's a good expression-gutted. It's exactly how I felt when I heard the shot. And, yes, of course I minded, but I'd stopped him before, and this time he said he was going to do it anyway and would rather do it with my blessing than without. So I gave him my blessing." He shook his head. "I hoped he wouldn't go through with it, but I wanted him to know I wouldn't condemn him if he did."

"Yeah, but-" said Terry again. He was more disturbed by the story than Deacon would have expected, and he wondered if there were resonances in it of his friendship with Billy. Had Terry lied about Billy not trying to kill himself? he wondered. Or perhaps, like Deacon, he had lost interest and had aided and abetted a suicide through apathy?

"But what?" he asked.

"Why didn't you say something to your Mum, give her a chance like to stop him?"

He looked at his watch. "How about we leave that question till later?" he suggested. "We've still got food to buy, and I haven't settled what I'm going to do to Hugh's nose yet." He lit another cigarette and studied his brother-in-law through the smoke for a second or two. "Why didn't Emma throw the pieces of this will away when she found them?'' He smiled rather cynically at Hugh's expression. "Let me guess. She didn't realize he'd only left her twenty thousand until she'd stuck it back together again, by which time you and your girls had seen it, too."

"She was curious. She'd have brought it home, anyway. But, yes, she hoped-we both hoped-that he'd left her enough to wipe out the debt we owe your mother. As things stand, Penelope's used money that's rightfully yours, so we're actually in debt to you. And I swear to you, Michael, it's not money we even asked for. Your mother went on and on and on about how she wanted to do something for the only grandchildren she was going to have, then I mentioned one day that we were worried about Antonia's poor grades, and that was it. Penelope set up an educational trust and Antonia and Jessica were in private boarding school within a couple of months."

Deacon took that with a pinch of salt. Knowing Hugh and Emma, there would have been endless little hints until Penelope paid up. "Are they doing well?"

"Yes. Ant's doing A levels and Jesse's doing GCSEs." He rubbed a worried hand across his bald head. "The trust was set up to pay the equivalent of twelve years' schooling-five years for Ant because she was two years older when it started, and seven for Jesse-and they've already had nearly ten between them. We're talking a lot of money, Michael. You've probably no idea how expensive private boarding education is."

"Let me guess. Upwards of a hundred and fifty thousand so far?" He lifted an amused eyebrow. "You obviously didn't read my piece on selective education. I researched the whole subject in depth, including cost. Has it been money well spent?"

Hugh shrugged unhappily, forced to consider his daughters' merits. "They're very bright," he said, but Deacon had the impression he would like to have said they were nice. "We need to sort this out, Michael. Frankly, it's a nightmare. As I see it, the situation is this: Your mother deliberately tore up your father's will and stole her children's inheritance, for which she will be prosecuted if the whole thing's made public. She has materially altered your father's estate by selling the cottage in Cornwall and by setting up a trust fund for the girls. Against that, had you inherited what Francis left you, presumably Julia would have taken half its value in her divorce settlement and Clara would have taken half what was left in hers, leaving you with a quarter share of what you inherited. For all I know, they may still be entitled to do that." He raised his hands in a gesture of despair. "So where do we go from here? What do we do?"

"You've left out your resentment at paying through the nose for Ma's private nursing care," murmured Deacon. "Doesn't that play a part in this complicated equation?"

"Yes," Hugh admitted honestly. "We accepted the trust money in good faith, believing it to be a gift, but the quid pro quo seems to be that Emma and I must fork out indefinitely for a live-in nurse, which we can't afford. Your mother claims she's dying, which means the expenditure won't go on for very much longer, but her doctors say she's good for another ten years." He pressed finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. "I've tried to explain to her that if we could afford that level of private nursing care we wouldn't have had to use her money to pay the girls' school fees, but she won't listen to reason. She refuses to sell her nouse, refuses to come and live with us. She just makes sure the weekly bill is sent to our address." His voice hardened. "And it's driving me mad. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd have put a pillow over her mouth months ago and done us all a favor."

Deacon studied him curiously. "What do you expect me to achieve by talking to her? If she won't listen to you, she certainly won't listen to me."

Hugh sighed. "The obvious way out of the mess is for her to sell the farm, invest the capital, and move into a nursing home somewhere. But Emma thinks she's more likely to accept that suggestion if it comes from you."

"Particularly if I hold Pa's will over her head?"

Hugh nodded.

"It might work." Deacon reached for his coat and stood up. "Assuming I was remotely interested in helping you and Emma out of your hole. But I have a real problem understanding why you think you're entitled to so much of Pa's wealth. Here's an alternative suggestion. Sell your own house and pay Ma back what you owe her." His smile was not a friendly one. "At least it means you'll be able to look her in the eye the next time you call her a bitch."