Читать книгу Lucky Strike - Pat Wilson - Страница 5

Five days after my long journey from the airport, I began to believe that I would be safe in this place. I felt the anguish and upheaval of the past six months fade like the memory of a nightmare as I realized that the trial, the threats and the fear were now behind me.

They said it would be a small cottage beside the ocean in a rural fishing community on the remote Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, fully furnished and ready to move in. I looked around me. Indeed, the cottage was small, the ocean was at the back door, and the community of Cormorant Harbour was only a short walk away. I could not dispute the facts.

However, beyond the facts lay a modest little house stuffed with depressing furniture, sitting on an acre of scrubby spruce trees and alder bushes which served to hide the accumulated debris of years of habitation by people with no garbage service.

Standing on a patch of rough lawn at the side of the house, I felt well hidden from anyone’s curious eyes. Behind me, the wide Atlantic spread to the horizon, its expanse broken by several small, uninhabited islands. In front of me, only the shack across the road bore evidence of any other human activity in the area.

For the first time in twenty-five years, I was without the constraints of a job. At first, I’d enjoyed the sense of unstructured time, much like being on a holiday. But now I felt the first stirrings of a need to “do” something. I decided to ignore the overgrown yard which desperately cried for attention. It was time for me to step into my new vocation—writer.

Again, I’d fallen in with this suggestion, but with a great deal more alacrity than I had accepted their other ideas. I’d always harboured a deep secret desire to be a writer. Although life had taken me to the towers of commerce, where any creative spark was soon extinguished by dull routine, I realized that this was my opportunity to re-light the fires of my ambition.

A search of the decrepit woodshed behind the house turned up some sagging lawn chairs, which I set up on the beach-rock patio beside the kitchen doorstep. With a sense of anticipation, I carefully opened my new laptop. The cat leapt onto the other chair. She was a nondescript breed, black with just a touch of white under the chin, a large neutered older female which I suspected had been obtained from some animal shelter. She fixed me with an unwavering yellow stare.

I hadn’t planned on an animal. In fact, my former fiancée, Chloris, had always accused me of being indifferent to the point of dislike of her two Siamese cats. With some reluctance, I had agreed that I might benefit from the companionship and stress-relieving qualities of a pet. So far, Twinkles (the cat refused to answer to anything else) and I had yet to form the master-pet bond.

I tore my eyes away from the cat, ceding the staring match to her. Fingers poised over the keyboard, I searched for the perfect opening phrase that would capture the reader’s imagination while leading into the heart of the bestselling novel I knew lay within me.

“RICKY!” The voice reverberated around the bay, shrill enough to shatter glass at forty feet. “Ricky! You get your ass in here right now! I’m not telling you again.”

The cat leapt up in alarm and dashed into the bushes. My laptop fell to the ground with a thud. All the old terrors flooded my brain; my heart started to pound with a sickening force. I felt bile rise in my throat, and for a moment, the world swayed around me. I wondered if I could be having a heart attack. My rational mind realized that this voice had nothing to do with me or my past, but my tenuous sense of security shattered in an instant. Could they have found me already?

“RICKY! Get in here. I didn’t make this hot dog for nothing!” The voice, if anything, increased in volume. It came from the shack on the other side of the road, a rundown clapboard box with a junk-filled yard and an air of abandonment. Having seen no sign of life in the past few days, I had presumed it was vacant.

A small boy, about eight years old, clutching a fishing rod, scrambled up from my rocky beach, raced across my lawn, careened onto my patio, paused two feet from my chair and responded in an ear-splitting screech, “Chill out, Ma! I’m coming!” I had a brief impression—ragged shorts, oversized shirt and roughly-cut hair. He looked ready to go on stage as a street-urchin extra for a production of Oliver. Oblivious to my presence, he rocketed across the road and disappeared down the overgrown driveway, dodging around several dead cars, a rusting furnace, a pile of bedsprings and an ancient water heater.

I sat stunned. This was a development I had not foreseen. Neighbours. And a child! One who felt entitled to fish from my wharf. A horrible thought crossed my mind. Maybe there was more than one child. Even a dog. What could be worse? I closed my eyes, trying to regain my composure.

“Howdy, neighbour.”

A man stood in front of me, a large man. I had no idea where he’d come from. For all I knew, he was one of them. I half-rose from my chair, ready to flee, but his bulk blocked my escape.

“Care for a chug?” A huge hand wiped the neck of a brown bottle then proffered it to me. I fell back into my chair, speechless.

“I’m Kevin Jollimore. Folks call me ‘Kev’. Welcome to the neighbourhood. That’s Arleen over there, hollering for Ricky. He’s my boy. Woulda come over to say hello sooner, but took the wife over to her Ma’s for a few days. Old lady wasn’t too well, but didn’t look no less mean than usual to me.” He paused to take a healthy swallow from the bottle. “Didn’t get back until today and saw you was moved in.”

He pulled up the other lawn chair, lowering his thick body into it. My heart was still pounding, and I could feel the cold sweat drying on my forehead. I tried to reconcile Kevin’s intrusion into what I had thought to be my solitary sanctuary. He was not a reassuring sight. His filthy plaid shirt gaped open over an equally grubby, stained undershirt. Dirt-encrusted work pants hung under a bulging gut. I strove to hide a grimace of distaste when I saw the roll of pasty flesh between his undershirt and the straining waistband of his pants. Run-down boots with the tongues flapping over his bare ankles completed his ensemble.

“Are yous just visitin’ like, or are yous plannin’ to stay awhile? Arleen was wonderin’, see, ’cause she likes to use your clothes line when she’s done a big wash.”

I had a brief, nightmarish vision of Kevin’s underwear flapping over my front lawn.

With an effort, I pulled myself together. “I’m here for awhile,” I stammered. The words stuck in my throat so that I had to clear it several times. My brain spun, trying to marshal my thoughts in order to make some sort of coherent reply. I must appear normal, I reminded myself, but I felt anything but normal before this behemoth. “At least, I think so.” I realized I had little to say in the matter. I was here until they decided to move me out. “I’m Charles Trenchant,” I said, feeling a brief frisson as I used my new name. Just saying it again gave me a growing sense of control in the situation.

Giving up my real name had been more difficult than I had imagined, but even I realized that I could no longer be Eric Spratt, a name linked forever with the trial of Marcello Bacciaglia and his various hangers-on in the Toronto Mafia.

“Glad to meetcha, Charlie.” Kevin pumped my hand in enthusiastic greeting. His eyes lit on my fallen laptop. He picked it up, handling it with exaggerated care. “Computers, eh? You one of them techie people? You heard about that hacker kid in Montreal, pretty much shut down most of the country? Wisht I could do that. Think you could teach me?”

“Ummm, er . . .” I paused, gathering my wits about me. I raised my hand to adjust my glasses, only to remember that I no longer wore glasses, but the new contact lenses they had substituted. It was crunch time. I lined up the facts they had given me for my new persona. With a sense of desperation, I trotted them out. “I’m not a techie, per se . . .”

Kevin’s brow wrinkled. The foreign phrase stumped him. I guessed he wasn’t bilingual. He was barely unilingual. “I’m actually a writer,” I told him.

A writer. I straightened my shoulders as I reminded myself of my new freedom from the grind of office hours, free from the daily familiarity of the commute, free from the drudgery of dry statistics, endless spreadsheets and soulless numbers. I felt much like a butterfly, newly emerged from its chrysalis of darkness into the sunlit future. I savoured the phrase, “chrysalis of darkness”, and tucked it away for future use in my novel.

“Oh.” Kevin dismissed the subject. He eyed me up and down. “You don’t look like you’d be much of a handyman,” he ventured.

Not like a handyman? What did Kevin expect? I knew that I didn’t have the muscular frame of a labourer, but many smaller men, Napoleon leapt to mind, were capable of changing the world. I stroked my developing Van Dyke beard, something else that I had initially resisted. Now, I appreciated the air of distinction it gave me and thanked whatever gods there were for its lovely silky silver appearance, unlike the orange brush so many men sported. The beard said “writer”, not “handyman”. I could see why Kevin’s hasty assessment placed me in the non-handyman category.

“You’re right,” I told him.

“Great! ’Cause if you was wanting any odd jobs done, stuff fixed, lawn mowed, whatever, why you just have to give me a shout, and I’ll be over here like a shot. It’s what I do, eh? Odd jobs. ‘No job too big, no job too small, Kev’s your man, he does them all’.” This last he rhymed off in a singsong voice. “Everyone knows me around here. Kev Jollimore. Not much I can’t fix or do.” He took another long swallow and settled back in the chair, looking at me with an appraising glint in his eye. “I hear you writers pull in a good buck, eh? Like those broads on Oprah. Sell millions they do. They gotta make at least ten bucks a pop. That’s gotta add up after a million books.” He shifted his weight in the chair. I heard it creak under the strain.

I saw his eyes look around and take in my little home with an appraising glint.

“I can give you a good deal. Strictly cash, eh? Your pocket to mine. Fix this up for you. Little bit of paint. New siding. Wouldn’t take much. Say forty per cent up front, and the rest when I’m done. We can work it out.”

“Wonderful, Mr. Jollimore. I shall certainly keep that in mind.” If his shack across the road was any testament to his handyman skills, I doubted I’d be calling on him any time soon.

I stood up, hoping he’d take the hint and go, but having got his business over with, Kevin settled in for a neighbourly chat. “So, got a wife? Little buggers?”

“What?” I asked as I placed my laptop on the top step of the back porch.

“Family? You got any?”

“I’m afraid I’m quite alone in the world. I tend to be a bit of a recluse.” He looked puzzled. “I like to be by myself.” In desperation, I folded up my lawn chair. “We writers are often solitary types.”

Kevin took another long pull of his bottle. “No family, eh? Lucky you. Family’s a bitch! Costs an arm and leg, specially with the little bugger. Raisin’ a kid soaks up the dough. And the wife’s always wantin’ something new, too. Although it’s nice to have a warm body next to you in bed on a cold winter’s night.” His lascivious wink invited me to share the joke. I shuddered at the thought of Kevin with anyone in a bed of any kind in any weather.

“KEVIN! Where the hell are you? Food’s on the table!” The Voice crashed over us like a sonic boom.

“I’m coming, woman,” he bellowed back. “Don’t get your tits in a wringer.” Kevin pushed himself up with a grunt, farted loudly, muttered, “Oops, better out than in,” and scratched his belly. His bulk blocked the last rays of the setting sun. “Women!” he said with a shrug as he spat into the wild rose bushes under the kitchen window.

The cat chose this moment to reappear. It eyed Kevin’s boots, keeping well out of range as it made its way towards the back door. It sat on the top step, poised to slip inside the minute I opened the door.

“That your cat? My old aunt Mildred usta have one like that. Bad luck, they say, a black cat. Don’t let Arleen see it. She’s that superstitious she’d shoot it.”

“It’s not all black. It has a touch of white under the chin,” I told him, wondering why I felt I had to leap to the defense of the cat.

“Mebbe so, but it sure looks like a black cat from twenty yards away.” Kevin shambled off across the road, swigging from his bottle as he went. “See you later, neighbour,” he hollered as he turned into his driveway.

“Did you ask him about the clothesline?” The invisible Arleen might as well have been on the patio beside me as her words reverberated on the air.

“Yeah. The line’s there, you might as well use it. Don’t look like he will.” The resounding slam of a door ended their discussion.

I stood in a daze for a moment, unable to move or think. This was the longest period in which I’d needed to maintain my new persona of Charles Trenchant. It had proved harder than anticipated. I felt as if I’d undergone a baptism of fire. Before I met and conversed with people with IQs substantially higher than Kevin’s, I’d have to learn to think on my feet and improvise, until Charles Trenchant became as much a part of me as Eric Spratt had once been.

Thinking of Kevin reminded me of Arleen, The Voice. Oh, God! For all I knew, today could be her laundry day! The muse would have to wait; that clothesline needed to come down now!

I sought out the ladder I’d noticed in the back of the woodshed. Removing the clothesline proved to be difficult. Kevin had been right about my lack of practical skills. The line sagged between the house and a large spruce tree. The hook on the house came down with no trouble, but the hook in the spruce tree had become overgrown. In the midst of sawing off the short prickly, branches around it while hanging onto the ladder for dear life, not having much of a head for heights, I heard the crunch of tires in the driveway.

For five days, no one had come near me. Now, in the space of an hour, the world was beating a path to my door.

I took a deep breath. No doubt it was just the Welcome Wagon making a call, I told myself, determined not to give way to my continuing panicky fears of being discovered.

“Good day, sir. Are you putting it up or taking it down, not that you have to do either, of course, especially with the wonderful clothes dryers they have these days, not that Dottie would ever use such a thing, but some people do, not everyone of course, depending on whether they have enough power for it, the clothes dryer that is, not the wash line, although it is handy if the power goes off, not that it does very often, although last winter, it seemed every second day it was off . . .”

“For heavens sake, Donald. Don’t get started.” A second voice cut in, this one a woman’s.

I realized in a moment that the man and woman at the bottom of the ladder peering up at me bore little resemblance to the nemesis I feared. Not two goons, but a rotund middle-aged couple with welcoming smiles. Although a little voice whispered in the back of my brain, what better way to lull me into a false sense of security?

“Just taking this old clothesline down,” I squeaked, trying to force my voice to sound normal and relaxed. I gave a mighty heave on the pulley, and, without warning, the whole contraption gave way, landing on my hapless visitors.

“I’m so sorry! Are you all right?” I scrambled down the ladder.

“Oh shoot! Oh my soul!” My male visitor struggled to remove several yards of clothesline wire from around his head and shoulders. “Oh my stars!” he exclaimed as he pirouetted around several times, which only served to tangle him further. “At least I’m all right, not a scratch, not that I know of. And you’re all right, aren’t you, Dottie? No harm done.” I found myself facing a large man with a boyish face over his well-padded, middle-aged body. A shining white clerical collar and black suit proclaimed his calling, but his resemblance to Tweedledum made it difficult for me to view him in a spiritual context. The woman with him looked like his Tweedledee counterpart, albeit several inches taller and with a great deal more hair on her head.

“I’m the Reverend Donald Peasgood,” he announced, stepping out of the last coils of clothesline wire. He shook my hand as he enthusiastically bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, which were shod in huge white running shoes closed with velcro tabs. “And this is my dear sister, Dorothy. We have come to welcome you to the Parish of Cormorant Harbour, and to bring you a copy of our parish letter, that is if you’d like one, not everybody takes them, at least not everybody we visit, although I suspect that everyone at the church gets a copy, that is, when Dottie’s able to run them off before the service, otherwise, I just pop them into mailboxes, although I’m not sure Canada Post would approve, the post mistress being a Catholic, and not a good Anglican, which isn’t to say she isn’t good, just Catholic, and I have known some bad Anglicans, not at St. Grimbald’s of course, or any of the other churches in our parish, at least, not at the present . . .” He proffered a small mimeographed leaflet. “You wouldn’t be an Anglican yourself, would you?” He peered at me through thick-lensed glasses in hopeful anticipation. “Not that it’s any business of mine, although one might say that it is my business . . .” he tapped his collar. “Please don’t think I mean to pry, it’s just that we so seldom have new faces around here, well, not that’s there’s anything wrong with the old ones, not all old in years, although many of them are getting up there, and indeed, I see fewer and fewer young people in the pews each Sunday . . .”

“Donald!”

Father Peasgood stopped in mid-spate as if someone had pulled the switch. Dorothy Peasgood took my hand in a firm grip. I found myself looking up at her. In fact, since I had stopped wearing the two-inch lifts in my shoes, another suggestion I had been loathe to take, I found myself looking up at most people.

Her massive frame stood almost six feet tall. She had abundant grey hair pulled back into a messy chignon and wore a smear of lipstick as her sole cosmetic. Her brightly patterned summer dress had the unfortunate effect of making her look like an overstuffed upholstered chair. At odds with her matronly ensemble, she sported a large, garish, guitar-shaped brooch pinned on her left shoulder.

I felt her gimlet eyes appraise me in a glance, much as she might look over a particularly choice cut of beef at the butcher shop. This look I had seen before in the eyes of other ladies of a certain age who hoped that Prince Charming lurked just the around the next corner. “Call me Dorothy,” she urged, “Mr. . . . ?”

“Trenchant. Charles Trenchant.” I let my tongue roll a little on the ‘r’s. Every time I said it, the name felt more comfortable, more me.

“And Mrs. Trenchant? Is she home today?” Her voice rose on a hopeful note.

I had a bad moment in which I couldn’t remember whether I was married or not.

“N . . n . . not married,” I stammered.

“Ohhh.” She smiled archly. “And are you just visiting, or are you planning to make your home here at Cormorant Harbour with us?”

“I’ve retired here.” I raised a hand to push up my glasses, then again realized I no longer wore them. I converted the gesture into a sweep through my hair, now much longer than it had ever been. At least I hadn’t had to shave it off or dye it some strange colour. The longer length suited me, I thought, and reinforced my new artistic image.

“Ex-civil servant, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the few who got a ‘golden handshake’ in the last round of cutbacks. This has enabled me to fulfill a life-long ambition to devote my time to my writing.” The words tumbled out, sounding as if I’d learned them by rote, which of course, I had. However, neither Peasgood seemed to notice.

“Oh, how exciting! An author in our midst.” Dorothy’s girlish enthusiasm clashed with the predatory gleam in her small blue eyes. “You must give a little talk to the A.C.W.—that’s our church ladies’ group. They’ll be so interested. And perhaps, you might consider leading a writers’ group, and we’re always looking for someone knowledgeable to serve on the Library Board, and a qualified person to judge the high school poetry competitions. Oh, I just know you’re going to love it here.”

All through this exchange, Father Donald reminded me of a restless racehorse at the gate, waiting for his chance to plunge back into the conversation.

“Oh my stars, yes, we’re quite a happy little family here, well, not all family, of course, although most of the people are related to one another in some way, although not to Dottie and me, of course, our being ‘come-from-aways’ like yourself, though not so far away, having just come from the North Shore, although some here think that’s another world, and much to our surprise, we discovered that many have not ventured off this shore in their lifetimes.” He paused and drew breath.

Dorothy took back the conversational ball. “And you’re from?” She probed, making little effort to hide her curiosity.

I decided she was wasted here in this hinterland. She belonged in the Crown Prosecutor’s office in some large Canadian city. “Tor . . . er . . . Ottawa,” I said, almost forgetting my lines. “Yes, Ottawa.”

Ottawa, I reminded myself. Yes. That was the story. Not Toronto, where I had lived. It was Ottawa, and now here, Cormorant Head, a remote community on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore.

“Ottawa! Our Nation’s Capital!” Father Donald announced. My slip went unnoticed.

“And your church affiliation is. . . . ?” Dorothy overrode him, continuing in her quest for information.

“I’m Anglican,” I told her. This much they had left me of my former self. “In fact,” I said, fingering my new beard, “I was a lay reader in my old parish.” Too late! The words had slipped out on their own volition. I regretted little about leaving my old life except that I would no longer be part of the mystical ritual and spiritual pageantry of St. Thomas’s. Standing at the lectern reading Morning Prayer, or processing down the aisle in full panoply, I had deemed my small role almost as important as that of the priest.

I could have bitten my tongue off. How could I have let such a thing slip? In a moment of despair, I realized that I had no stomach for this cloak-and-dagger existence. Slips like this would lead to my ultimate downfall, if not demise, should I make them in front of the wrong people. Certainly, the Peasgoods looked innocent enough, but I’d been warned not to trust anyone. I needed to remember that my enemies would never rest until they found me.

Father Donald beamed, almost apoplectic with enthusiasm. My heart sank as he bounced up and down. I realized that I couldn’t retract my statement now. “How wonderful! An answer to prayer! Our lay reader passed away just six months ago, so sad, poor fellow, although a blessing in some ways, not that his dying was a blessing, especially not to me, but with his difficulties, you know, his failing health, and always, so determined to keep up his duties at St. Grimbald’s, despite his increasing deafness, although at eighty-seven years, one must expect this, although I’ve know some people who’ve retained remarkable use of their faculties well into their nineties . . .” At this point, he stopped and looked bewildered. “Well! It’s good to have you. We must get together for a long chat,” he finished.

“Perhaps you will join us for lunch at the rectory after church on Sunday?” suggested Dorothy, seizing the opportunity to consolidate our acquaintance.

“Oh, yes!” said Father Donald, picking up on the need to strike while the iron was hot. “That would be wonderful. It would give you a chance to see how our little church functions, and then, we could prepare a letter for the Bishop, not that the Bishop minds, he’s glad to have anyone on board, well not anyone, he wouldn’t want murderers or criminals or atheists, although I doubt an atheist . . .”

“Donald!”

Father Donald’s musings on the suitability of atheists as lay readers in the Anglican Church ceased. Dorothy turned to me with a smile. “The service times are in our newsletter. We will see you on Sunday.”

Any thoughts I had of excusing myself faded before Dorothy’s implacable tone. I would be more likely to refuse a royal summons from the Queen of England than say “no” to Dorothy Peasgood.

I realized I had trapped myself by my own carelessness—the same kind of carelessness that had propelled me into this place and this situation. I still found it hard to believe that I, an honest, law-abiding citizen, a man of modest means, a simple accountant, had held the key to the biggest drug bust in Canadian history. Little did I know that when I had carelessly picked up the wrong briefcase one damp, October morning on the Markham to Union Station GO train, I would end up here. If I could have foreseen the danger that lay ahead of me, of the threats to my life, of the unending sense of insecurity, of the anxiety, the fear, the turmoil that my public-spirited act would lead to, I would have tossed the cursed thing into the nearest garbage bin.

And now, here I was, trapped in a situation far beyond my experience or imagination, struggling to become someone else. Was it any wonder that I made a slip-up now and then?

I had no choice but to send a note to my contact in the Witness Protection Department. They would have to create a fictitious lay readership to replace the genuine credentials that I could no longer use without revealing that my new persona was a complete fabrication. Surely adding a few spurious details from some church in Ottawa wouldn’t be a problem for people who had been able to wipe the entire fifty years of my previous existence from the face of the earth.