The Trickster. Muriel Gray
Katie handed over eighty dollars in twenties and scooped Jess back into her arms. Jess, however, had other plans. She’d spotted a small frightened-looking child in the doorway and struggled to be let down to go and greet it. Katie released her.
‘You know, that was the night that Sam was in Stoke. He got stuck on account of that storm. Thank God he stayed put or … well …’ She trailed off, shrugging, and watched her daughter trying to hug the small boy behind Mrs Chaney’s bulk.
‘Or it might have been him? Yes indeed it might have been, Mrs Hunt. And well might we thank God. He moves in mysterious ways. Mrs Reader’s loss, your gain.’
The childminder tucked Katie’s money into the big pocket on the front of the apron she never took off.
Katie got annoyed. ‘Hardly, Mrs Chaney. I don’t think that was the deal. I’m sorry to hear about it. Please tell Estelle we’re thinking of her if you see her.’
Her attention was focused on Jess now, and she used it to change the subject. She didn’t want to discuss poor Joe Reader with this woman any more. ‘Hey. Is this a new man in Jess’s life?’
Elsie Chaney looked down at the two children. ‘That’s the Belling boy. You know.’
Katie didn’t know, but she knew she would be told. ‘No. I don’t believe I do. He looks a bit lost.’
‘The son of that man. You know.’
Katie still didn’t know.
Mrs Chaney sighed. ‘Put away. For abuse.’ She mouthed the words as if they were too foul to be spoken aloud.
Katie’s heart dropped down a rib or two in sympathy.
‘Oh. The poor darling.’
She leaned towards Katie.
‘Welfare pays his bills here. The mother can barely cope. Heartbreaking, though, to know it’ll all happen again.’
‘You’re kidding. You mean they’re letting the guy see the boy again?’
Elsie Chaney looked at Katie as if she were one of her children. ‘No no. He won’t be back. I mean when the boy grows up he’ll repeat the sins of the father.’
Katie looked open-mouthed at the innocent blue-eyed mite, now having one of his cardigan buttons sucked by her daughter. ‘You can’t say a wicked thing like that, Mrs Chaney. He’s a tiny child for heaven’s sake.’
Mrs Chaney was clearly irked by the accusation of being wicked. She straightened up, no longer keeping her tone soft. ‘Seems you don’t know your social psychology, Mrs Hunt. The abused always becomes the abuser. Text book.’
Katie held her gaze for a moment, itching to challenge her. But this was the only crèche that suited them. She couldn’t blow it. She bit her tongue and went to pick up her daughter.
The little boy backed away as she bent down to Jess. Katie looked into those frightened eyes and wanted to cry.
What had they seen?
‘It’s okay, pumpkin. I’m Jess’s Mom. Would you like a hug?’
He turned and ran. Jess shrieked in delight again.
Mrs Chaney looked triumphant. ‘Same time tomorrow, Mrs Hunt.’
Katie hesitated, still looking into the empty doorframe where the boy had stood. ‘Yes. Same time.’
Elsie Chaney went back into the cacophony of tiny voices, smoothing her apron as she went.
Katie’s mood was very different now as she walked along the snowy sidewalk with her daughter kicking the snow up and hanging on her hand. Scary thoughts were bouncing around in there. Thoughts about how it could have been Sam’s truck losing control and crashing in the dark.
But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be. She got rid of that one before they turned into their street. The one she couldn’t shake off was still there when they reached the house. The abused always becomes the abuser. The stupid woman. The stupid, stupid woman.
Only three trees felled. That had been Don Weaver’s boast and marketing slogan when he started the Silver Ski Company back in ’sixty-eight, for the absurd investment of a hundred and twenty thousand bucks.
The turn-over now in ’ninety-three was in the millions, and they’d sure felled more than three trees in the last twenty-five years. But the picture of Don that hung in Eric Sindon’s office was the photograph of a principled man with dreams, who despite the changes that had happened to his fantasy resort, would not be happy to be remembered as anything other than ‘three-trees-felled Weaver’.
Eric was sitting back thoughtfully in his canvas-covered office chair, gazing up at the picture of Don. He saw a black-and-white, ten-by-eight photo of a tanned young man on long wooden, hinged binding skis, smiling in front of an almost unrecognizable Beaver Lodge. Eric grimaced as he scanned the picture of the old lodge with its Alpine porch and cute carved window-boxes. The present-day lodge was more like a bus terminal but it did hot business and what shareholder would want window-boxes over profits?
The tree Eric wanted felled real bad was laughing its head off on the other side of the thin partition separating their offices. If he’d known that Don’s daughter Pasqual was to come in and run the company after Don died, Eric would have tied his spotted hanky to a stick years ago and headed for another resort. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been made offers. There had been plenty, but he hadn’t jumped. Like a fool he stayed put, trusting in Don’s judgement and friendship, only to find himself number two yet again, but this time to a privileged, brainless bitch who couldn’t run a shoe-shine stand.
The big question was what to do now. He was forty-seven years old and time was almost up. Pasqual had been running the resort for a season and a half and things weren’t going to get any better for Eric.
She knew what he thought of her and he was just as sure she was going to make a move soon to pluck him out like a bad tooth. Sure, the resort would suffer, and sure, she would be sorry when she discovered the guy who really ran the place had gone. But it would be too late. He would be pushing fifty with no shareholding partnership in the business he’d helped build up from nothing, and Miss Dumb-ass would be moving some twenty-six-year-old business school graduate into his office.
He remembered Pasqual two decades ago when she was a cute kid, hitching a ride on the back of her Dad’s skis down to the lodge, squealing with delight as she hung on round his broad waist. If he’d known that apple-cheeked kid would one day turn into the hard-faced vixen, who overturned every good decision he made in this resort, he might have done something about it.
Eric sat upright in the elderly chair. What did he mean by that, he wondered? He felt suddenly uncomfortable.
He swivelled the chair round to face the desk again and shuffled some papers around. Next door, Pasqual was shrieking down the phone, not a business contact by the sound of it.
‘C’mon. He did NOT!’ She guffawed like a horse snorting.
Eric got up and left the room. If there was no business that needed to be done in the front office he would make some up. He had to get away from that farmyard braying or he would do something he might regret.
The administrative block of Silver Ski Company was labyrinthine and depressing, a series of what amounted to no more than concrete sheds, growing at random from a central two-storey lodge like barnacles on a shipwreck. Eric stalked through its corridors on his way to the front office, his fists clenching and unclenching in frustration.
When he arrived, only one person was where they were supposed to be. Betsy was on the phone, the new guy Sitconski, gone from his desk.
‘Where’s the rest of the shit-hot team?’