Heads I Win Tails You Lose. Lynne Fox
I glance about me but nothing seems to have changed and then I notice the smell, sickly, cloying with an underlay of stale urine. I turn to my right to look behind me when a hand grips my left shoulder. Turning instinctively toward it I’m startled by a dirty, sore-rimmed mouth inches from my own.
I cringe, bringing my hands up to my nose, desperately trying to block out the stench of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol. ‘Get off me!’ I twist my body violently away, wrenching free from the nicotine-stained talons that are digging into my shoulder. The tramp makes another grab at me. His long nails catch on my scarf and for one terrifying second I fear he’s going to use it to strangle me. With a strength I wasn’t aware I possess I grab hold of my scarf and wrench it free. He stumbles as I yank it from his grip and grabs for the back of the bench to steady himself. I don’t wait around but dart forward, my bag flying open behind me and I don’t slow down until I reach the main entrance to the park.
Supporting myself on one of the brick pillars that form elaborate gate posts, heaving air into my lungs, I can see the tramp hasn’t followed me. I can’t believe I managed to run so fast, especially in my new, knee-high boots with the three inch heels. I glance down. The toes are badly scuffed and one heel seems a little loose, damaged by my sprint. The bastard! I only bought them last week!
I look up and glare in the tramp’s direction. He’s arguing with someone. I can’t make out whom, as the tramp’s shielding my view, but his anger is unmistakable; arms flailing, body pitching forward, his raised voice a guttural slur, the words indistinct at this distance. He raises his arm, I think to strike but no, it’s a futile defensive move. He slumps to the ground and I see one of my students, Barry Mason, standing over him.
Barry remains for a second or two, apparently transfixed by the body of the tramp lying at his feet then seems to pull himself together, throwing the rock he’s holding deep into the overgrown herbaceous border that forms a backdrop to the bench.
He turns his gloved hands palm up, inspects them and then, brushing them off, turns and looks in my direction. I cower behind the brick pillar, unsure whether he’s noticed me but his gaze seems distracted. He gives a shrug of resignation and turns, walking behind the bench and disappears into the foliage.
I remain where I am for a minute, maybe longer, expecting Barry to reappear but he doesn’t. I’m puzzled. There must be another way out of the park behind the overgrown border that I’m unaware of.
So many questions are hurtling around my mind. Why did Barry assault the tramp? How long had he been there? Did he see the tramp accost me? Does he know the tramp? I wonder if I should go back, see if the tramp is alright. If I were a good citizen I should get on my mobile and inform the police, call for an ambulance. I look down again at my ruined, expensive boots.
I glance at my watch, almost two o’clock and I’m due to teach at two thirty. I sling my bag over my shoulder and, without a backward glance, hobble on my wonky heel back to the college.
CHAPTER 2
I spend a lot of time thinking because I’m naturally logical and methodical and I like to plan; a belt, braces and piece of string person. I know this is irrational as no-one can plan for every eventuality but, nonetheless, I have to try because it’s all part of the game I set myself; the challenge; my reason to exist.
I cast my mind back over the years and visualise myself sitting on the stairs, my arms hugging my knees, folding in upon myself for comfort. I can just see my parents in our lounge, framed by the edge of the door and the wall; like a tableau of idyllic married life. They’d been drinking, they often did, and as always with them the booze raised voices and loosened tongues. It was then I discovered that I was a Mistake; an error of judgement; something to be marginalised and preferably ignored.
I didn’t understand it at the time; I was only six, so I went to Matt, my big brother. He looked at me kind of funny and turned his head away, then suddenly swung round, grabbing me and throwing me onto his bed, tickling and telling me I was so gorgeous he wanted to eat me! I giggled and squirmed and shrieked and the moment passed but its undertone, the sense of something wrong, of an unjustified unkindness, lodged deep in my subconscious. Like a festering boil it swelled as the years passed until I discovered the means to lance it. The game I play is my scalpel and I now wield it with ruthless precision.
I pour myself a large glass of Chenin Blanc and curl up on the sofa with my album memories of Matt. Closing my eyes I recall the afternoon I’d found the album.
A young girl, my world had irrevocably changed; my brother had recently died so, as a way of keeping him with me, I decide I will make an album of Matt’s life. I traipse round the usual book stores but lack of enough cash and the seeming sterility of new books soon has me making my way to my favourite bookstore; the second hand bookshop at the top of the hill.
Once a dwelling house of some standing, the former home of a local dignitary, its front two rooms are now filled floor to ceiling with shelves crammed so tightly it’s often difficult to extract the items you want.
Using my shoulder for leverage, I push against the resistance of the entrance door’s strong spring and stumble down the step into the shop, the jangling of the brass bell discordantly announcing my arrival. As the door wrenches itself free of my grasp it slams back into its frame, dislodging a shower of fine dust that floats gracefully in the sunlight before settling on every surface within reach, including me.
I stand for a second, breathing in the muskiness of aged paper, sensing the inherent dampness of the building brush against my warm skin and absorbing the fecund silence of millions of words caught between covers, waiting to be released once more into human consciousness.
I pass swiftly through the front rooms on my familiar route out into the back garden where, in summer, a round metal table and chairs and a couple of wooden benches allow customers to sit and browse for as long as they please. The garden rises quite steeply via a crazy-paved path to an outbuilding, little more than a glorified shed, but it holds treasures that have entranced me since Matt had first brought me here on my eighth birthday to choose my gift. It was only fitting that I should end my search here.
The outbuilding houses a miscellany of items that have mostly seen better days; dejected looking works with worn covers, dog-eared pages sometimes defaced with comments by previous readers but it was this that, to Matt’s amusement, I loved.
Browsing through these old, discarded tomes, I find thoughts scribbled in the margins, corners of pages turned down to mark points of interest, sometimes phrases underlined or highlighted and I feel I have a window into other minds; I observe without being observed. It’s a good feeling.
It’s the album’s cover that catches my eye; worn leather, the charcoal-brown of singed toast etched with a filigree of fine lines, like tiny veins. Under the caress of my fingers it feels warm, a living thing. I lift it to my nose and inhale the dust of years, its animal and human scent. Inside are black pages made of an absorbent substance, reminding me of blotting paper but more substantial; here and there photograph corner tabs remain glued to the pages, with occasional annotations in white ink, written in a beautiful copper-plate hand; sad reminders of someone else’s treasured memories.
‘Y’know, you could use a bit of Dubbin on that cover; real leather it is, high quality once. Just needs a bit of TLC to stop it cracking any further.’
The bookseller, his skin as crazed as the cover of the album, leans in toward me, his fingers gently brushing the album surface as he speaks.
‘How much is it?’
He takes it from my hands and turns to the inside back cover.
‘Five pounds.’
Carefully, I count out the coins from my purse.
‘Oh, I’ve only got four.’
My voice breaks in disappointment as I hold out my hand, the coins displayed as evidence. He looks at my outstretched palm, its contents shining in a shaft of light from the open door and reaching out, scrapes the coins toward him with yellowed nails; a chicken scratching in the dirt.
‘That’ll