Cold to the Touch Read online

  ‘Good morning, Sam, how nice to see you,’ Celia Hurly said. ‘Blood on your hands already, I see.’

  Help. This was a spiteful day. A bad anger day: he could see the signs. She must have had a bad Sunday. Celia cooed at him in the same way that Mrs Smith cooed at deaf overfed seagulls, apparently regardless of their response.

  ‘How nice everything looks. So clean. Sam, so very clean. I marvel at you really, managing with so little help.’

  ‘Got plenty of help, Mrs Hurly, thank you. There’s always our Jeremy and you know I’ve got a couple of lads in the afternoon for the hosing-down and scrubbing – if they turn up, that is. Not a germ in sight.’

  ‘I didn’t like what I ate yesterday.’

  ‘No! Really! Why was that, I wonder?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t like it.’

  ‘Well, I never. Does that mean you’re a bit poorly? Was it breakfast or dinner that did it?’

  ‘I think the meat was bad.’

  Sam shrugged, smiled; nothing you could do with Mrs Hurly on a bad day except humour her and deflect her from talking about the rent. Humour her, as everyone did, because she owned so much, including the freehold of the shop he leased from her fair and square, as he had from her husband, dating back to the days when old Hurly returned to the place of his childhood and bought everything he could for next to nothing, even the abattoir in Ripley. Who did she think she was, acting like a landlady when she didn’t need the money and couldn’t cancel the lease anyway? He wished he understood her and then decided it was better he did not. She just needed to lord it, so let her and if she also wanted to use his shop to announce any information she wanted spreading round, that was fine, too. He knew she could rely on him for that.

  ‘Wash your mouth out, Mrs H. It wasn’t any meat you had from here, was it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be back for more.’

  ‘Who says I want to buy anything? Can’t I just pass the time of day?’

  ‘Any time, Mrs H, any time. You could just come in for a lemon and we’d be pleased to see you.’

  A downright lie, although the old duck did have some entertainment value on a good day, but otherwise, even with all that posturing as if she ruled the roost, she was only another widow like so many of the rest, although a bit better off than most and much more elegant, however she stooped. And a good customer; marvellous how much meat she could eat and waste and you had to be patient with her, on account of that and the fact she was on her own with a daughter like that, although whose fault that was, well, anyone’s guess. You don’t give a girl like that delusions of grandeur and expect her to behave well. No, he could put up with Mrs Hurly, as long as she didn’t start on Jerry.

  Who chose that moment to come out of the back with an armful of sausage which he dumped on the stainless-steel table to the left of the counter. Jerry was the best sausage maker on the planet and he was holding fifteen feet of pure pork snake to his chest with real affection. Easing the spool of sheep intestine skin onto the nozzle of the meat tank, pressing the motor pedal with his thigh and guiding the meat mix through his hands into the tubular skin so that it emerged evenly into a snakelike penis of even circumference – well, it was all a bit phallic, made them giggle, so better done out the back. Everything was moist. The sausage snake shook out of the machine’s nozzle wetly and flopped. They often joked about it and swore at the machine, Jeremy and he, but not in front of the public. Jeremy looked as if he was handling a python: he was fully focused on the job of controlling it as he began his assembly line. He twisted off half of the sausage snake and suspended it on a hook so that it hung down like a smaller snake, with both ends level: then he began the twisting process, turning the snake into links of sausages. Pinch, twist, loop the end through, pinch, twist, loop, like plaiting hair, and lo! a row of sausages hanging in glisteningly symmetrical pairs in seconds. He picked up the next half of the snake.

  Sarah, watching from the door, wanted to clap.

  ‘I hope your hands are clean, Jeremy,’ Mrs Hurly said. ‘They don’t look it.’

  His hands were purple with cold and his face was flushed, the beak of his nose redder than his mottled forehead. The trainers beneath his trousers were greyish-dull, with a much-washed look, like the flaccid synthetic material of the trousers which flopped round his ankles and the faded shirt collar which poked, crooked, above his splashed apron at his narrow neck. He kept his back to her and touched the sausage tableau lovingly. Then he moved sideways to deal with the rest. Sam moved towards him, patting him on the back in passing as if to encourage him not to turn and face the enemy.

  ‘Clean as a whistle, Mrs H. You know that. Like everything here. And isn’t he clever? I never could string sausages as quick as that, and all the same size, too. He’s a natural – well done, that man.’

  ‘He’s a dirty little beast,’ Mrs Hurly said.

  Sam began to whistle and look busy. If in doubt, sharpen a knife and take no notice. Pray for someone else to come in at the same time as Mrs Hurly, just as he did when he had a salesman in the shop. Bettaware, Tupperware, purveyors of plastic thingies, telephone lines, any damn thing, they could take up an hour a day. He glanced over to where Sarah stood at the door. She’d heard. Nice woman, chatty but reserved, he liked her, remembered he’d promised to get her herbs. Made a change from widows, but living in that place vacated by Jack Dunn, surely she knew that she was in the presence of her own landlady? He always had time for a woman who did not quarrel with the price of fillet steak.

  ‘Look at him,’ Mrs Hurly said to no one in particular, addressing her remarks to the ceiling as if only the ceiling would hear.

  ‘Did you ever see anything quite so ugly-wuggly?’ she asked. ‘Or quite so awfully drab? Like he’s been in the washing machine on the wrong cycle and come out the same grey, apart from the nose and the awful complexion. I don’t know why you let him in here. Can’t be good for business – who’d want what he’s touched? Who knows where he’s been?’

  ‘Now, now, Mrs Hurly, mind the language. What can I get you?’

  ‘The runt of the litter,’ she continued. ‘The nastiest little doggy. Can’t he do anything about his face? Can’t you send him next door to fix his hair? Shave it off to make it cleaner? Yes, a shaved head would be better, then he couldn’t pass on his nits.’

  Jeremy was reaching to place the second sausage length on the hook next to the first. The rail of hooks was set at the furthest reach of his long arms. The sausage slithered and slipped onto the sawdust-covered floor. He began to stamp on the meat with his feet until the sausage skin burst and the pulp mingled with the sawdust. He wiped his trainers on the mess and slowly turned around to look at Celia Hurly. Then he plucked a large knife from the rack. He held it above his head in both hands like a dagger, advanced a few steps uncertainly. His sweater rode up to show a fraction of pale torso: there were tears on his high-coloured face. Celia Hurly stood where she was, rooted to the spot in the middle of the floor, looking at him like a rabbit caught in headlights. Jeremy took one step further, his arms shaking; Sam watched, paralysed, thinking fucking do something, and then, out of his sideways vision, that woman stepped between Jeremy’s sausage-strewn trainers and Celia Hurly’s gaping face, tickled Jeremy’s torso with her gloved hands. Tickling, not scratching, like someone tickling a kitten’s tummy.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘That was great what you did with those sausages. Can I have some, please?’

  The knife descended, as if of its own accord, until somehow it was cradled harmlessly across his chest, with his arms folded over it. He looked down at his sticky feet, then back up into Sarah’s face, level with his own. Slowly, he began to grin.

  ‘Cost you,’ he said. ‘Once they’ve gone on the floor, they’re in the bin. I’ll get wages stopped. Only joking.’

  ‘You’ve got lovely eyes,’ Sarah said. ‘What’s your name?’

  The sweater and shirt had fallen back into place. She pulled his jumper down over his waist and straighte
ned his collar, neatening him up. From behind them Mrs Hurly screamed.

  ‘Sausages,’ Sam muttered. ‘Talk about sausages.’

  Mrs Hurly screamed again in a short, sharp bark. Sarah turned and kicked her in the ankle. Mrs Hurly stopped screaming and started shouting.

  ‘What what what . . . That little bastard tried to kill me, you saw, you saw, coming at me with a knife, and you . . . you kicked me. You saw what he did.’

  ‘What knife?’ Sarah asked pleasantly. ‘I didn’t see a knife. Did you see a knife?’

  ‘No,’ Sam said.

  Sarah was blocking Celia’s path towards the counter where Jeremy had retreated. Celia tried to sidestep her; Sarah moved in tandem so that they looked like two people rehearsing a dance routine and under cover of their odd movements the knife went back on the rack and Jeremy disappeared out to the rear.

  ‘You kicked me!’ Celia screamed, trembling with rage.

  ‘Did I? I’m so sorry, I do apologise, it was an accident. You can kick me back if you like.’

  Celia’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were did you get that coat? It’s really nice. Lovely line.’

  ‘I . . .’ Mrs Hurly clamped her mouth shut and stared at Sarah in disbelief.

  ‘Anything I can get you, Mrs H?’ Sam asked. ‘Only it’s half-day closing.’

  ‘On a Monday?’ she hissed. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since now, Mrs H, I can have half-day closing any day I like. There’s always tomorrow.’

  Celia turned away abruptly and retreated to the open door where she grabbed hold of the baby buggy that she had left outside and began to walk away uphill, looking old and weary. Sam moved quickly to shut the door behind her and turned the open/closed sign to ‘closed’. Then he strode towards the back of the shop, jerking his head towards Sarah to indicate that she could follow if she wanted. She did.

  ‘Put the fucking kettle on, Jerry,’ he yelled.

  She could hear the sound of someone crying.

  An echo in her head. I shouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. DON’T.

  Mrs Celia Hurly would have said the same things to her daughter as Sarah would herself.

  What a nasty old bitch. But no one was just that: it was never that simple.

  Sarah went backstage.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘He wouldn’t have done anything, you know,’ Sam said. ‘He really wouldn’t, even if he wasn’t stuck to the floor. But I don’t know quite what I’ll do if she calls the police.’

  ‘I was there,’ Sarah said. ‘There was no knife.’

  ‘Sure about that?’ He put a mug of tea in front of her. They were leaning against the deep stainless-steel sinks in the tiny kitchen area at the back. It was warmer than the small anteroom that led to it, via the stores and the chiller, and still only a few steps from the front.

  ‘Perfectly sure,’ she said, drinking her tea boiling hot. ‘And I promise you, people tend to believe me, especially when I’m not telling the truth.’

  He could see that. She had the bright-eyed direct gaze of innocent credibility and absolute conviction; she would convince anyone. Even that copper from last Friday would believe this redhead rather than grey-haired Celia Hurly, whatever her status and volume. Sarah would inspire belief with a pitying smile and a whisper. He put Sarah at forty; that gave her at least twenty years on Hurly. Not fair, really, but then, Hurly had started it.

  ‘Yes, I bet they do. Why did you do it?’

  There was no hesitation.

  ‘She was being absolutely poisonous. She deserved to be slapped rather than stabbed. I wanted to stop it.’

  ‘He’d have tripped over his feet before he got there, you know.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, he probably would, and I probably knew that, too. I wasn’t taking much of a risk. I’m not brave.’

  ‘You move fast.’

  ‘Only sometimes.’

  Sam gulped his tea and shifted his bottom against the sink, shook his head. ‘Beats me how you know how to make our Jeremy stop in his tracks. All you have to do is say something nice and touch him. He doesn’t get much of that, it works every time.’

  She shrugged. ‘He’s a man, isn’t he? Do you know how he got the scar on his forehead?’

  ‘He says it was a meat hook, they can catch you sometimes, but I don’t know. He’s somebody’s bastard, all right, used to work in Hurly’s abattoir. The Hurlys owned a lot round here, though he sold most of it before he died.’

  ‘And that was Mrs Hurly? Who owns my house? Charmed, I’m sure. Why on earth has she got it in for him?’

  Sam was relieved not to have to tell her that she had just kicked her landlady, and that others might be hanged for less, but he wasn’t going to tell her everything, only enough.

  ‘Don’t rightly know, only Jeremy and Mrs Hurly’s daughter once went to the same primary school, down the road, when it was still here.’

  There was the sound of energetic sweeping and whistling from the shopfront. Jeremy had passed by twice, fetching broom and bucket, silent and smiling as he squeezed past. He seemed sublimely indifferent to the inevitability of them talking about him, or maybe that too was a rare privilege. Sam leant forward and whispered, ‘They were sweet on one another, like little kids can be – he must have been a pretty little lad once – and they sat together and she got nits. Jeremy was blamed, like he always is. Mrs Hurly went mental, took Jessica out of there and sent her somewhere else while Jerry got his head shaved. He stayed sweet on her, though, not the only one round here, no, no, no. Or the only one to get nits. He’ll start scrubbing the block in a minute. It’s very hightech – do you want to see? Poetry in motion, our Jerry.’

  ‘You trust him, don’t you?’

  Sam gulped the tea and threw the dregs into the sink.

  ‘Depends what you mean. To keep his temper when he’s goaded, maybe not. To have the key to this shop and know his meat backwards, yes. To take my daughter out swimming and boating when she was a kid, to take you out on the beach or in a boat and show you where to find herbs and get everyone home safe, yes. To get here early and open up the shop, yes. To make sausages, yes. Phone him up in the middle of the night and say I’ve broken my leg, or the car broke down, come and find me, yes. Enough?’

  Sarah laughed, pointed to a curled photo pinned to a cork-board alongside paper invoices near the sink and the kettle. The photo showed three beaming blondes.

  ‘Christ, that’s been there for ever. Those three are mine, all grown up now, two married, grew up around Jerry and that school. He’s older than he looks, Jerry. They were all kids then. Oh yes, I trust our Jerry, as much as you can ever trust anyone who’s been a bit bashed about. But,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I’ll have to be honest and say I’m ever so glad he was never sweet on any of mine. I love the silly bugger, but he isn’t the dream son-in-law, even if he does know his meat. I’d better get on.’

  He heaved his bulk away from the sink and looked at her approvingly. He liked the way she noticed things, eyes everywhere. He’d forgotten that photo, forgotten half the things he’d ever known. She was taking in details like a Health and Safety Inspector, with a lot more charm. She noticed him noticing her noticing, and smiled, half embarrassed to be caught out.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but I love the back end of shops. I like the dirty bits, like seeing how things work. Can I stay a bit?’

  ‘Only if you’re useful. Jerry!’ he yelled. ‘This lady wants to know how to clean the block. Shall you show her?’

  ‘All right.’ A happy growl from the front.

  ‘Then she wants you to take her on the beach to find herbs, OK?’

  The shout was even louder, the reply too.

  ‘All right!’

  Sam took Sarah’s arm and guided her to the front of the shop.

  ‘I know you’re going to be helping out the vicar with his decor, he said so when he bought his tw
o sausages this morning, mean bugger, you must be mad. But if he needs extra labour Jerry’ll help out, nothing he can’t do, as long as you don’t take advantage. If you do, I’ll skin you, only I’ve been trying to find him a champion these last ten years.’

  High-tech. This is how you scrub a butcher’s block, or at least the way I do.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Show me and I’ll do it.’

  ‘Look at it first. Big butchery day today, started early, so this block’s been well used, see? And only got sponged yesterday, so it needs the scrub, get the fat and blood out. Love this block, a foot thick, dipped in the middle, solid oak. Weighs a fucking ton, when it wears down turn it over and start again, takes years for that. First a big bucket of hot water and detergent, any old kind. Scrub it all over, work in the soap, lift the fat and the grease to the surface, scrub it out of the crevices. Do that twice, big fat brush, not the hardest brush, that’s later.’