Chapter Fourteen

14


The uprising of Skipton-Le-Beans

Friday, September 23

It was meant to be a celebration of Gabriel, the budding kitchenware rep who, despite her relative infancy in the job, had just sold in a gross of Scarelli corkscrews to a North East independent. Sure, Updike Littlejohn Ltd’s London rep had made her look ordinary with his six gross and twelve gross orders. But he had Habitat and Marks and Spencers and John Lewis and Selfridges and everyone else buying in bulk for the entire country. Gabriel only had independents, owner-operators with small stores in small towns. For an independent, a gross of Scarelli corkscrews was a shit load of corkscrews, bearing in mind these were top-of-the-range, fuck off corkscrews with a fuck off recommended retail of a penny under ten pounds.

So while Gabriel still struggled to get within Cooee of her budgets, Updike Littlejohn recognised her potential (I suspect a male dominated company also recognised her youth and prettiness). Slowly but surely she was going from mere order taker – trailing buyers around their shops order pad in hand, scribbling product numbers and quantities of pots and graters and dicers in columns, never once attempting to turn a two into a six or a six into a dozen. Suddenly, like a champagne cork from a shaken bottle, she’d turned six dozen into a gross. To the statisticians at Updike Littlejohn, this was like a century on debut and they leapt at the opportunity to acknowledge the milestone with Friday night drinks at five o’clock. I tagged along like a proud parent.

I didn’t drink. I was driving – an hour back down the A1, a bona fide proud parent in the form of Mariabella Hogg was readying a small Chicken Colditz-style celebration in her only daughter’s honour. I won’t pretend I hadn’t instigated this. I was eleven years older than she was. I knew the importance of landmarks, no matter how trivial. I admired Gabriel’s love of cooking and her fervour for wining and dining peripherals – the nuts and bolts of the industry. I knew that gross of Scarelli corkscrews was like a Folio Award to her – a decent enough pat on the head, a step in the right direction. I knew the importance of praise.

By the time we headed south again, it had been dark for two hours. We sighted Skipton-le-Beans in the valley ahead, porch lights around the village green like a fleet of fishing boats on a black sea. As we entered the village from the northern end, the Audi headlights fell on a cluster of cars, dark and empty and parked on the edge of the green. We swung into Skipton-le-Beans and that cluster of cars only got bigger and bigger. The entire village green was submerged beneath a gridlock of cars and four wheel drives and utes and tractors. It was as if the entire Shire had descended on Skipton-le-Beans, the overflow spilling out into the lanes on all sides. Had we been in the Volvo I doubt we‘d have got through.

Gingerly approaching the duck pond end before our right turn to Chicken Colditz, orange light spewed from the windows of the Pig in Muck Inn. An impressive crush of bodies could be seen within.

‘Must be a function,’ Gabriel said.

‘Must be a bloody annual convention,’ I said. ‘You’d have thought Austin would have been there.’

‘Austin is there,’ Gabriel said. ‘That’s his car.’ Austin Hogg’s muddy green Range Rover was indeed parked right outside the Pig in Muck. ‘And Attie’s,’ Gabriel said as the Slug’s small blue Toyota utility came into view parked right behind the Range Rover.

This came as a surprise, diluting as it did the surprise supposedly waiting for Gabriel a mile down the road.

‘Do you want to go in?’ said Gabriel.

‘No, I don’t want to go in. Bella’s expecting us.’

She was…


The front door of Chicken Colditz flew open before the gates could close. Mariabella Hogg flew out much like Gabriel had the day I arrived. Only considerably less attractively, a combination of age, wonky knees and a purple leisure suit doing her few favours.

There was also a different kind of urgency in her advance. It wasn’t the gleeful you’re back! kind of urgency. It was more the your brother’s just electrocuted himself in the bath! kind of urgency. Enough for Gabriel to mutter ‘What’s up with her?’ and for me to sense some catastrophe and stop the car. I got out as she rushed up.

‘Get out!’ she screamed. I already was out so this made no sense. She clarified with a flailed arm at the gates. ‘Get the fuck out!’

This wasn’t quite the reception we’d expected. Gabriel got out.

‘You get back in!’ Mariabella wailed. She was shaking with rage, almost foaming and definitely drunk and I have to admit my first thought was that she’s hacked Simon to death with a cleaver and was expecting a quiet night breaking down his flesh in a barrel of acid. Then we turn up. She was just that manic, that crazed, that scary.

‘Mum?’ was Gabriel’s initial contribution as she ran around the car; ‘Bella!’ was mine as I avoided a flying slap.

‘Get out! Get out! Before I call the police!’

She took another swipe at me. ‘Bella. For God’s sake! What are you doing?!’

‘Bailey. Get in the car!’ This was Gabriel.

‘What?’ This was me.

‘Get in the fucking car!’ I fended off another swing and got in the car. She kicked the door as I closed it.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Gabriel said confronting her mother.

‘What do you fucking care?’

‘At the pub?’

‘Course he’s at the fucking pub, you stupid bitch! You stupid fucking bitch! Don’t you take him there! Don’t you dare take him there!’

She took me there.

We drove into Skipton-le-Beans in a shaken silence broken only by Gabriel flat lining: ‘Now you know why I left.’

The Pig in Muck Inn was as busy as we’d left it ten minutes ago.

‘Dad will be pissed off his brain,’ Gabriel said. ‘He can’t cope with crowds.’

We parked halfway to Newcastle and made our way back to the door. I pulled it open, let Gabriel enter ahead of me and I could hear the hub of voices inside. Just from the sound I could tell there were a lot of people in there. Just by the way Gabriel stopped dead at the inner door and went ‘Whoops,’ I could tell they were crammed in like John Wests drinking John Smiths. The place pumped after all.

What happened next was divine intervention. Had Gabriel and I got into the heart of the Pig in Muck that night, it’s doubtful I’d have got out alive. At best I would have become the regions latest vegetable. For this I will remain eternally grateful to Simon. And his bladder.

Gabriel was facing up to the crush of bodies at the inner door to the bar. I was right behind her. I was about to take her hand and squeeze us through to the bar when Simon emerged from the Mens. He was still in his dirty blue work overalls and he’d clearly had a few – eyes mainly eyelids, head like a peacock with Parkinson’s and he required the wall to redirect his path.

Then he did a double take. And a drunken pirouette. It was a miracle he saw us at all through those down turned slits for eyes. The explanation, however, is short and sweet.

Very short and sweet.

He saw Gabriel before she saw him, his eyes opening like rusty roller doors as he sought a semblance of focus on his midget half sister amongst a blur of coat-covered bellies. His bloodshot pupils boggled. Then he saw me and they almost came clean out of the sockets.

He gathered himself, pushed us out the door and marched us into the dark amongst the cars and tractors on the village green. Something told us to keep our mouths shut until we were safely hidden amongst the cars. Simon spoke first in a fit of hyperactive Rain Man type agitation, pacing on the spot, crossing his arms, sticking them on his hips, crossing them again.

‘H-How could you do this, Bailey?’ he said to my knees.

I looked at Gabriel, a stern faced, shadowy wee figure in the moonlight flitting off the cars. She shrugged.

‘Do what Simon?’ I said as sweetly as I could.

Simon began to cry.

I looked to Gabriel who took the baton. ‘What’s wrong, Simon?’

‘Dad will k-kill me,’ he said.

We exchanged a glance, her stern one for my bemused one.

‘I d-don’t know what to think, Bailey. I just don’t know w-what to think.’

‘Think rational, Simon, is all I can say. Because there’s not a lot of it about. We have absolutely no idea what’s going on here. Your mother,’ – I pointed towards Chicken Colditz – ‘just told us to fuck off.’

‘People are p-putting two and two together.’ He said this as if I was four and I wished I could see his face instead of just some shadowy interviewee in the Witness Program.

Gabriel was surprisingly mute. ‘Gabriel, have you any idea what Simon’s talking about?’

‘No,’ she said from the shadows.

‘Do you think we should ask Simon for some specifics?’

‘I think we should definitely ask Simon for some specifics.’

‘Simon?’ I said moving a bit closer. ‘If you love your sister you’ll give us some specifics.’

‘I-I-I—’

‘Come on, Simon, you’ve had a few drinks. You’ll be fine.’

‘I-I have a copy of the letter.’

‘What letter?’

‘The letter you sent.’

I looked at Gabriel. ‘I didn’t send you any letter, Simon.’

‘Don’t you lie to me!’

‘Simon. I’m not lying. Can I see the letter?’

‘Y-you wrote it!’

‘No, I didn’t. Can I have it?’

‘N-no. Print it off your computer.’

‘It’s not on my computer. Give me the letter or I’ll strip you naked and tie you to that tree.’

He looked pleadingly at gabriel. ‘Did you get one, G-Gabby?’

‘A letter? No, I didn’t. I’d love to see it though, Simon. I’d love to have your copy. I promise I’ll give it back.’

In the dark, hands went to overalls pockets and Simon duly held up a small folded square of paper, its whiteness making it the most visible thing on the Skipton-le-Beans village green.

‘Can I have that, Simon?’ I said like a teacher taking chewing gum from a twelve year old. He gave it to me.

‘Thank you. This, I take it, contains all I need to know?’

‘N-no! That’s j-just the one from m-my rugby club. There are loads more. Y-you should go home. Don’t go into the pub. And d-don’t t-tell dad I s-saw you.’

‘We won’t, Simon,’ said Gabriel giving her half-brother a kiss on the arm. ‘You’ve done the right thing.’

Gabriel read the letter out in the car with the interior lights on as I drove home. I was dying to know what that letter explained about Mariabella’s scary behaviour and Simon’s scared behaviour and the pub’s plain odd behaviour on a normally sleepy Skipton-le-Beans Friday night.

We’d barely covered a mile before it all became abundantly clear.