chapter thirty-nine

The Wyckham Arms

The Public Library is a wonderful institution. Founded by a Victorian philanthropist, the one which Kay passed on her way to work had enabled the education and entertainment of generations in this seedy end of South East London. However to Kay it represented something far more focussed than the benevolence of its patron; it had enabled her to discover Frank’s address, and had given her the opportunity of observing him on a daily basis. He would not be there yet; Frank did not arrive until after ten and she clocked on at nine, but she would make it her business to devote some of her lunch hour to watching him sitting at a monitor. At this stage she did not know exactly why she was intent on keeping such a close eye on Frank. He had announced his presence with the grisly remains of her friend in Listowel. She was determined not to be surprised by him as Trisha had been.

Yet behind the logic of that argument she was aware of an uncomfortable, savage pleasure. Like a cat she enjoyed the silent, careful stalking of the prey. Like a cat she anticipated the game of toying with her victim; then the ecstasy of crunching his bones and licking out his entrails.

Shocked at her thoughts and the dampness in her cunt she looked into the grey London sky before entering the betting shop and clocking on. The pale faced punters were already shuffling about the room, their flesh the colour and texture of the racing papers, their smells tobacco, alcohol and coffee. The lost and hardened losers rarely ate, and seemed to contain famine within their cheap clothes. Kay felt sometimes that she gave out the scraps of paper detailing bets as a priest administers the host: her punters retiring to bars and coffee shops to silently digest their hopes, and to pray for their own salvation.

The odds meant nothing to her. In this way she was immune to the contagious flow of ratio that fed the cancer in her customers. She checked off slips concerning probabilities for horses, dogs, football teams and even aspiring singers without the slightest desire to know of the realities they in some way described. Her only concern was the balance between the chances of her survival or Frank’s. There was no possibility of a no-score draw in this encounter.

Her colleagues had aspirations of understanding the relative prowess of the punters, and when certain customers placed bets would rush to a neighbouring establishment to replicate a wager that was guaranteed to be “golden”. Kay had already learned that this practice was a sign of co-dependency and had made the bet-takers as hollow as the bet-makers. Theirs was a virtual life, fed by half comprehended details of an event somewhere else. She, on the other hand, was living the contest, backing herself to survive, and she was likewise forced to do the study of form that would secure her victory.

But Frank was a horse of a different colour. His ability to survive had been clearly demonstrated to her, and she had seen his ruthlessness and pride at first hand. She would have to prepare thoroughly, and that meant careful observation of his behaviour wherever she could find it.

Thus, at one a.m. she checked out for lunch and, pausing only to pick up a bottle of water and a packet of crisps from a corner shop, headed for the library where she would be sure to find him.

To her astonishment she saw Frank leaving the library and walking rapidly along Brockley Rise. The determination of his step in contrast to the lethargy she had observed over the previous weeks sent alarm bells ringing in her brain. He knew something and was acting. Kay tried to reason that this probably had nothing to do with her, but the images of her customers’ faces told her the truth: he knows something that you don’t. She opened the water and rinsed her mouth. Air came in but she didn’t feel it. She ceased to respire and decided to act.

And Frank entered the Wyckham Arms.

Pubs at lunchtime in south east London were not the natural environment of young women unless they had business to conduct. Kay found that business being conducted along with many others, equally unregulated by the government. Then she found Frank, clear spirit in one hand and Guinness in the other moving to a table near the darts board. His target was an Irishman in his forties, obviously employed in the building industry. She took in the overalls, the spits of plaster on the boots, the heavy hand supporting the forehead as Frank passed in front of him, placed the Guinness on the cheap table and settled himself. She wanted to move closer in a risky, possibly fatal attempt to overhear the conversation, but a sudden jarring bolt of recognition paralysed her. She knew this man. He had been Trisha’s next-door neighbour in the Ash Field.

One glance in her direction an Anthony, for that was his name, would jump up and greet her, whole-heartedly welcome her and invite her to meet his new friend, for she knew his nature. If this happened she would not survive her lunch hour. Striving for South East London anonymity she gently turned and headed for the ladies.

She crouched in a booth helplessly reciting the scratched obscenities on the toilet door and trying minimise her inhalation of excrement and stale supermarket perfumes. The few women in the bar meant that she had a generally solitary residence, although she had to feign illness to avert the concerns of one who used the lavatory as an office to set up her afternoon appointments, the details of which Kay wished she had not overheard. Some men had unusual ways of finding relief. Eventually she accepted the culture of her temporary cell and emptied her terrified bowels into the lavatory.

She stopped breathing for too long, but then refused to gulp in the fetid air. Instead she controlled the passage of gasses, and this produced a glacial calm. She stood, adjusted her clothing and rinsed her face and hands. The bar was quiet now. Frank and Anthony were gone. The bar tender was intent on studying the racing pages, although he must use a rival bookies. The tables had not been cleared and Kay went to the one that Frank had occupied, just to know she could bear to do it. Nestling under the Guinness glass, stained now with the sienna alcohol was a rectangle of decomposing paper. She lifted the glass and gently turned the paper.

It fell apart against her fingers, but that meant nothing. The blood pulsed in her veins, her saliva ran hot and tension dissolved in a suppressed orgasm. It was the voucher for the seaweed baths in Ballybunion; her bait, the first speculative step in her counter attack on Frank. The bait had been taken; now she had to set the trap.