EPISODE ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
Two days after the
funeral of her first husband, Jackie refused to make the journey to East
Peckham to sort out his house contents.
Vanessa and Nicky hadn’t learnt to drive, so Nigel reluctantly agreed to
take them over and lend a hand.
The house was a nondescript, early sixties built semi-detached, in a rather
characterless street of similar houses.
The girls, expecting to find the house a mess inside, were surprised at
how neat and tidy everything was. It
was almost too pristine, as if someone had been round to put everything in
order before they began the house clearance, although they didn’t think anyone
else had a key.
The house had one through lounge downstairs, a spacious kitchen and dining
room, and upstairs there was one bathroom and two reasonable size
bedrooms. Nothing in the house reflected
the personality of its occupant and it remained as characterless as the
building itself. There was not a single
framed picture or photograph on the bare walls.
It was as if their father had deliberately wanted to remain an enigma,
even after death. Except that the circumstances
of his accident had a neon presence imprinted on their imaginations as they let
their eyes wander from the sofa across the carpet to the wide screen television
set.
Nigel’s curiosity burned with excitement as he tried to tug open two doors of a
large teak sideboard and discovered it was locked.
‘I wonder if there’s a key to this hideous piece of furniture,’ he said.
Knowing the sideboard would probably contain items of a more personal nature,
such as holiday photographs, and possibly official documents like insurance
policies, and hopefully a last will and testament, they began a search for the
key. Nicky found it in the cutlery
drawer in the kitchen. Vanessa grabbed
it from her and pushed it into the lock.
‘Well, let’s hope he put his house in order,’ she said with a small nervous
laugh as she pulled the sideboard door open.
Nicky gasped. ‘Oh my God!’ she
exclaimed.
Nigel tried to suppress a smile, knowing how it would upset the girls if they
saw how amused he was.
‘I’ve never seen so much filth,’ he said.
‘It’s disgusting.’
The sideboard was filled with stacks of hard-porn videos and DVDs, with titles
such as Suburban Gang Bang, Close Cum Shots and Teenage Slags Get Punished.
And, as if the pornography wasn’t bad enough, there were sex toys and
contraptions of every description. Some were still unpacked in their polythene
wrappers. Vanessa took hold of a
peculiar looking object and held it at arm’s length.
‘What the hell is this?’ she said. She
turned it over and read on the underside of the package: ‘Treat yourself with
this blow-job simulator.’
Nicky began crying. ‘Get the bin
liners,’ she wept. ‘Let’s get rid of
this stuff.’
‘Are they still in the car?’ Vanessa asked Nigel. But he was miles away, his head buried in a
pornographic magazine.
‘Hmm?’ he murmured without looking up.
‘Men!’ snapped Vanessa. ‘They’re all the
bloody same.’
*
‘Let me top you up.’ Donald poured red
wine into Ted’s glass. ‘I’ll open
another bottle. You look as if you need
a sedative.
Ted mumbled his thanks, gazing forlornly into the distance. Donald left the room, returning a few minutes
later with another bottle of Rioja.
‘Hey! Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘Ted looked up. ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was tremulous. ‘I’ve been depressed
lately. I don’t want to give up my job
on the railway and run a commercial hotel.’
Donald came and sat next to him on the sofa.
‘Well, just refuse.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
Donald patted his friend’s knee. ‘Yes, I
know. It’s always easy to dish out
advice. But if you want my advice.’
Donald took a sip of wine, waiting for Ted to respond.
‘I suppose,’ said Ted with a trace of bitterness, ‘that you’re wondering why I
want to keep my job as a guard.’
Donald nodded fervently. ‘I must admit
running a hotel would seem to offer more of a challenge. I mean, toing and froing to Charing Cross every day’s a bit of a dead end job I would have
thought.’
‘But you don’t understand, Donald. I
need to keep the job because of you.’
‘Me?’
Ted took a large gulp of wine before continuing. ‘Yes, I have a certain amount of independence
at the moment. Marjorie doesn’t show
much interest in my rota, overtime and all that. So I get to see you whenever I like.’
Donald frowned thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I
know what you mean. Once she’s got you
in her sights all day long.’
Out in the kitchen something clicked loudly, making Ted start. ‘What was that?’
Donald laughed. ‘The dishwasher tablet coming
out of its little box as it starts its cycle.
You thought it might be Bamber, didn’t you? No need to worry about that any more, now
that we’ve broken the ice between us. He caught Ted glancing at his watch. ‘How long have we got before you have to dash
back to the wife from hell?’
Ted leaned back on the sofa, feeling relaxed as the wine went to his head. He giggled.
‘Yes, to hell with her.’
‘That’s my boy,’ Donald encouraged.
‘You know, there was a time, Donald – recently – when I thought things would be
better between Marjorie and me. If
only...’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want to share you. If only you
could get shot of Bamber, and I could get rid of Marjorie, we could both live
together and look after Miranda. Life
would be perfect.’
A mischievous glint came into Donald’s eye.
‘Well, we’ll just have to get the poison bottle out, won’t we?’
*
Nigel reversed the car into a space by the household waste area at Tunbridge
Wells rubbish tip. Vanessa threw open
her door hurriedly, dashed round to the back and opened the boot. She grabbed one of the offending black bin
liner bags and was about to lift it to hurl it into the pit of rubbish and
waste below, when an officious voice chilled her.
‘One moment. This is household waste.’
Vanessa gave him a sharp look. ‘This is household waste.’
The council official moved towards her black bundle. He was a short, stocky man with a ragged moustache,
and Vanessa would have liked to pull it off his face, causing him a great deal
of pain. He looked at her bin liner
suspiciously.
‘That looks like books and magazines.
That’s for recycling.’
Vanessa raised her voice. ‘Look, you
idiot, this is household waste. So mind
your own business.’
She lifted the bag and was about to hurl it into the mess below.
‘But it is my business. We’ve got a good
record for recycling. And we’re looking
to improve it.’
He grabbed the bag. Vanessa tried to
pull it from his grasp and it split, spilling its contents on the ground. Eyes widening, the council man stared in
fascination at the bundle of hard pornography, and especially a picture of a
peroxide blonde in the full-throated act of fellatio.
‘What the hell’s this?’ he demanded.
But Vanessa had already turned and got back into Nigel’s car. ‘Quick!’ she yelled. ‘Let’s get out of here. The bag split, and the council man saw what
was inside.’
Nigel laughed uproariously as he drove away.
‘That’s not funny,’ said Nicky, cringing in the passenger seat next to
him. ‘And there’s another bag of the
stuff. Now what are we going to do?’
‘Let’s drive to some woods and dump it,’ said Vanessa.
Nigel stopped laughing. ‘But that’s
fly-tipping. It’s illegal.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Vanessa.
Nigel snorted, couldn’t contain himself and began laughing again. In spite of her recent shock, Vanessa suddenly
saw the funny side of the incident, and she too began laughing. Before long, all three of them were sharing
the joke, and Nicky’s tears were tears of laughter now.
IN EPISODE 123
Catastrophe strikes at Maggie’s wine bar.