All the Empty Places Read online

  ‘Dunno. What do you fancy doing?’

  ‘Dunno,’ she mimicked, ‘but it’s a nice day. Too nice to spend it in bed.’

  ‘Tired of me already, is that it?’ I asked. ‘Or am I just wearing you out?’

  ‘Neither. But I thought we could do something together.’

  ‘Seems to me we’ve been doing things together for the last few days.’

  She blushed. I loved that about her, that she could still blush when I said something like that. ‘Nick, you’re embarrassing me,’ she said. ‘And I’ll never be able to look at the neighbours again.’

  ‘They’ll get over it,’ I said. It occurred to me that they must’ve heard plenty when Tufnell had been knocking her about, but thought it politic not to mention that.

  ‘So what are we going to do today?’ she asked after a minute.

  ‘Want to go to the seaside?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ She was like a little child and my heart melted.

  ‘No kidding. Let’s go to Brighton.’

  8

  Once we’d decided there was no stopping her, especially when I told her we’d stay over. ‘God, I need to pack,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a thing to wear.’

  ‘We’re only going for one night,’ I said. ‘And last time I looked you had a wardrobe full of things to wear.’

  ‘Fat lot you know,’ she told me in that way women have as if they’re talking to a simpleton. ‘Where are we going to stay?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I replied.

  ‘I’ll need a sea view and a balcony.’

  ‘Need? You don’t need much do you? I expect The Grand and The Metropole are booked up.’

  ‘Too expensive for you, handsome? Don’t worry, I’ll pay my way,’ she said, wrinkling her nose like I was a bad smell.

  ‘You know that’s not what I mean. And forget about paying. I invited you. Remember?’

  ‘You going to treat me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How are we getting there?’

  ‘We’ll drive. I’ll get my car. You get ready and I’ll pick you up in half an hour.’

  She didn’t bother to reply, just went to her wardrobe and started sorting clothes.

  I went home, showered, shaved, changed clothes, threw a clean shirt, underwear, socks and shaving gear into a bag and went round to the lock-up garage that had come vacant on the next street where I’d been keeping my car. That year I was driving a 1969 Ford Mustang coupé. It was a brutal motor, 5.7 litre engine, automatic gearbox, power steering, power discs all round, cherry bombs on the exhaust so that the car sounded like Concorde landing, a front spoiler, mag wheels and fat tyres under a lowered suspension and full race interior. It took a bit of starting and played up until it was warm, but then it went like shit off a shovel. Inside the cockpit it was all original with an AM radio and eight track stereo. Remember them? You can get the cartridges for fifty pence if you know what junk shops to look in. I do. Unfortunately one of the downsides is that you’re not spoiled for choice on the titles available. Lots of Pink Floyd and Genesis I’m afraid, but occasionally a gem will show up. Another downside is the fact that they’re roughly the size of a paperback book and are notoriously unreliable. The upside is that you’re unlikely to have your car stereo nicked.

  I climbed in the motor, pumped the accelerator and turned the key. It started on the third turn, stalled as I put it into gear, then started when I twisted the key again. I reversed out into the street, left the engine running whilst I shut the garage door and locked it, and drove round to Sheila’s. She’d never seen the car and her eyes widened when she came out of her front door carrying a suitcase big enough for a world cruise. ‘Is this yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Check the owner.’

  She didn’t bother to reply as she climbed into the front bucket seat which I’d emptied of eight track cartridges, and after I’d stowed her luggage I helped her with the seat belt, making sure I touched her breasts as I did so.

  ‘Have you taken many women out in this?’ she demanded.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Good. You were too handy when you belted me up.’

  ‘All part of the service ma’am.’

  ‘Sure.’

  It took us just about an hour and a half to get to Brighton, and I showed off all the way, screeching the tyres and over-revving the engine until the cherry bombs howled.

  ‘You’re a flash fucker,’ she said when we were driving sedately down the front.

  ‘My middle initials are F. F.,’ I said.

  I didn’t bother with the really posh hotels, they’re always full, but just down the road on the way to Hove we found exactly what she wanted. A hotel with one double room vacant, complete with a sea view and balcony just like the lady ordered. The balcony wasn’t all that big, but the view was great and she was as happy as a pig in shit.

  It’s funny that. I’ve always found that laid back people are dead hard to please. Always moaning. But hard to please people are easy. Just give them exactly what they want and they roll over and let you tickle their tummies. Sheila did anyway.

  And when I’d tickled her tummy enough we got dressed and went out to eat.

  She’d brought enough clothes for a month and finally settled on a grey, forties style two-piece suit with a real tight skirt.

  When she was dressed she craned round to look at her back view in the mirror and asked the same question that every woman I’ve ever known asks sooner or later.

  ‘Is my butt too big?’

  Every woman, I swear. Eventually they get round to it. Is my butt too big? Or my backside, or bum, or arse, or ass if they’re American, or posterior, or derrière, or rear, or fanny or any damned alternative word they can think of. I’ve heard that question a thousand times put a thousand different ways, so much so that it’s become a joke. And yet they still do it. And I always answer it the same way. Just like I did when she asked me. ‘It’s perfect,’ I said. ‘A dream. A rhapsody. The cutest one I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘You’re so insincere.’

  ‘Shallow even.’

  ‘But you don’t have to stop.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re beginning to like compliments?’ I asked.

  She held up her forefinger and thumb till they almost touched. ‘A bit,’ she replied.

  ‘I knew I’d win in the end.’

  ‘Don’t be so smug, shut up and take me out to eat.’

  So I did.

  9

  The evening was warm and we went to this buzzing Italian restaurant I know at the top of The Lanes. We strolled there hand in hand through the crowds of tourists, but we might just as well have been the only two people in Brighton that evening for all the notice we took of them.

  The restaurant was still there, and already packed out, but we managed to get a table under the stairs where it was relatively quiet. When we were seated comfortably with the ever present bottle of red and two cigarettes going, Sheila said, ‘Have you brought lots of women down here for a dirty weekend?’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ I asked wide eyed. ‘Goody.’

  ‘Answer the damned question.’

  I thought for a minute, hiding behind my glass. I thought about other women, other times and places. ‘One or two,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Nick.’

  ‘There’s a lot a lot of people don’t know.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me.’

  ‘Sometime,’ I said.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to bore you.’

  ‘I thought you said you never were.’

  ‘Maybe I was exaggerating.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You’ve never bored m
e.’

  ‘So far. There’s lots of time.’

  ‘I suppose so. Do I bore you?’

  I pretended to think. Dangerous territory again. ‘Of course not, my sweet,’ I replied.

  ‘Don’t take the piss.’

  ‘Moi?’

  ‘Yes you. Come on tell me, have I?’

  ‘Not for one minute. Honest.’

  She reached over and touched my hand. ‘I’m so glad we met that day and that you came back after I was so strange about it. A lot of men wouldn’t have.’

  ‘I’m not a lot of men.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  I put down my cigarette and covered her hand that was touching mine. ‘I love you, Sheila,’ I said.

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  She pulled her hand away quickly. ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  She shook off the question with a shrug. ‘Nothing. It’s just me. Come on, we’re supposed to be having a good time. Let’s choose.’ And she picked up the menu, opened it and hid her face away from me.

  I didn’t think anything much about it then. I was too happy. Later I did.

  We ate a lot, got half pissed and went back to the hotel holding hands again and looking in the windows of the antique shops in The Lanes before hopping a cab for the short run down to the front. We were both eager to be alone and left the lights in the room off, the balcony curtains wide and the french doors open so that we could hear the traffic and the people on the front below us and the sea beating on the pebbles of the beach beyond it.

  We made love, then raided the mini bar and took our booty to bed. Sitting up drinking and smoking we could see the lights of the ships on the black horizon and the stars above them.

  That night she let me talk. I told her about my wives and what had become of them. My daughters, and what had become of them. One alive and living in Scotland, the other curled up next to her mother in the black earth of Greenwich. I told her about lots of things, some I’d never mentioned to a living soul before.

  ‘You’ve had a rough time,’ she said.

  ‘Not as bad as some I could mention. I’m still here. Still standing. Barely. At least I’m alive.’

  ‘I think you’re very brave.’

  ‘Bravery is a relative concept. Sometimes I think it’s just being so scared and frightened you don’t dare show it.’

  ‘You’ve got friends though. People who’ve stuck by you.’

  ‘You should never count on other people, I’ve found. They always let you down sooner or later. The cock crows three times and they fuck you over.’

  ‘Including me?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘I trust you and I hope you trust me. I won’t let you down, Nick.’

  I could see her green eyes shining in the dark again and I put one finger over her beautiful lips. ‘Don’t say that,’ I said. ‘You could live to regret it.’

  She shook her head and kissed my finger and I forgot the remark in the heat of her body.

  The next day we had a late breakfast and the Sunday papers delivered to the room and lounged around until checking out time, when we collected the car from the NCP where I’d left it and drove back to London, diverting for lunch in a country pub near Pease Pottage.

  We got back to London around five and I dumped the car and we walked back round to her place where I spent the night again.

  The next morning I watched her get ready for work. Before she left she said, ‘Will you do me a big favour?’

  ‘Sure. Just name it.’

  ‘I have an envelope. I want you to keep it for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just don’t want it here. It’s personal papers and things. Have you got somewhere you could keep it safe for me? Very safe.’

  ‘Sounds mysterious.’

  ‘No. It’s just bits. But I don’t want it here.’

  ‘Something to do with Johnny?’

  ‘No. Yes. Not really. Will you keep it for me?’

  ‘Course.’

  She went to the wardrobe and hunted round on one of the shelves before producing a big, legal sized Jiffy bag secured with one of those metal clips that goes through a thin washer. It looked bulky and heavy and she put it next to me on the bed. I hefted it in one hand. It was heavy. ‘All your worldly goods?’ I asked jokingly.

  ‘If you like. Take it with you. I don’t want it here. If I need anything out of it I’ll ask. Just put it somewhere and forget about it and go on with your life. Don’t tell me where.’

  ‘I take it it’s private.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘But you haven’t sealed it.’

  ‘I told you I trusted you. I know you won’t look inside if I ask you not to.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘There. See what I mean. Now are we going out tonight?’

  ‘Of course. I couldn’t go a day without seeing you.’

  ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  She kissed me and left, and in time I got up, got dressed, made the bed, had a cup of coffee and headed home taking the envelope with me. I didn’t look inside. She was right. She could trust me. Instead, I put it untouched into my secret place underneath the roof of my flat where I keep the two guns I still have as a souvenir of old times. Of course I was tempted to open the envelope and look at its contents, who wouldn’t be? And don’t forget my job is poking my nose into other people’s business. But Sheila had put her faith in me and I wanted to prove that she was right to do so. If I had opened it things would have worked out a whole lot differently, but we’ve all got 20/20 hindsight so I just tossed it up into the space under the slates with the seal unbroken.

  Then I did what she said. I forgot all about it and got on with my life.

  10

  My daughter Judith called me from Scotland that evening.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ she said.

  ‘Hi, darling.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not bad. You?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  Monosyllabic. She was seventeen then, and I suppose that’s how seventeen-year-old girls talk to their estranged fathers. I hadn’t seen her for months, so that’s how I felt – estranged. ‘How’s school?’ I asked after a second’s pause.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. She was coming to the end of her school career. Next stop university, her being no slouch with the books.

  There was another pause, then she said, ‘Dad, I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve met someone.’

  Oh dear, I thought, she’s pregnant, run away to Gretna Green. Married. Exit university, enter dirty nappies and a council flat in Leith. ‘Who?’ I asked with just the slightest catch in my voice.

  ‘Don’t sound like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you’ve just swallowed a pill.’

  ‘Sorry. Who?’

  ‘A bloke.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘It doesn’t always follow. Not these days.’

  ‘Fair enough. I stand corrected. But it is a bloke?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When did you meet?’

  ‘A few weeks ago.’

  ‘Yeah?’ My mouth was dry. Her first boyfriend. A day I’d always dreaded as she grew up and left me. But if it was only a few weeks then maybe my worst fears were unfounded.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is it serious?’ I asked.

  ‘Could be.’

  I wasn’t going to ask if she was sleeping with him. I refused to do that. ‘It either is or it isn’t,’ I said,
and almost bit off my tongue.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  So she wasn’t sleeping with him. Thank God for that. ‘What’s his name?’ I said.

  ‘Jerry, with a “J”.’

  ‘Is he Scottish?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No. Just tell me he hasn’t got red hair.’

  ‘Oh, Dad, you are funny. He’s not Scottish as a matter of fact, and he hasn’t got red hair so there.’

  ‘Where’s he from?’

  ‘London. He’s up here at Uni?’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘A good age,’ I said, for the sake of something better.

  ‘We’re coming down for a visit.’

  ‘To London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next weekend. He’s driving.’

  ‘What car’s he got?’ Stupid question and we both knew it.

  ‘Oh, Dad. It’s a Ford Escort as if it really matters.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘He wants to meet you, and I’m going to meet his mum and dad.’

  ‘It is serious then.’

  ‘No. It’s just a break. I wanted to see you too. I haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So is it alright?’

  ‘Of course. Where will you stay?’

  ‘At his. His folks have got some massive place in Highgate.’

  ‘Blimey. They must be loaded.’

  ‘I don’t know. His father’s something in the city.’

  ‘Makes me look pretty downmarket.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Anyway, we can go out for dinner.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said, and added, ‘I’m seeing someone too.’ I didn’t want her to think I was a lonely loser with a one-room flat in Tulse Hill compared to something in the city and his wife with a mansion in Highgate.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I hate it when you’re on your own.’

  I didn’t bother to let her in on the secret that we’re all on our own. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is it serious?’ she asked in a parody of my question.

  ‘I think so.’