Part Eight – The Drying Green

Today’s instalment takes us outside to overhear a conversation.

Part Eight – The Drying Green

Mark’s irritation was palpable. He had driven round the block three times in the hope that he might escape the beady eyes of his mother who, no doubt, would see him if he wasn’t careful. He had already told her a convoluted story about doing some work for a company on the other side of town, but he still fully intended to be home for lunch. There was no way he was going to start paying for sandwiches now. Not after all this time.

He had started by fetching Ciara. He liked her. She was an interesting woman with bags of personality. She had been married four times, although the whereabouts of one of her husbands remained unknown. There was a glint in her eye, he was sure of it, every time she spoke of Ted. The missing one. That’s why he liked her. She was suspicious and mysterious and, he concluded, very unlikely to be law-abiding in situations where she needed an advantage.

“Why are we going round in circles?” she complained. Ciara was a woman of action and while she found Mark an amiable enough character – she had her own plotting and planning to do as to how he could be most useful to her – she found him tiresome.

For a man in his forties, he seemed unduly tied to his mother’s apron-strings and she was sure he was interested in her. Romantically. He had no chance; there was no possibility at all. No mummy’s boys for Ciara.

“I think my mother is out and about,” he was looking as shifty as a man could look and her irritation grew.

“And what of it? So what if she sees you? You can make something up. Say you forgot something, or that you had business.”

Mark sighed. She didn’t get it. His entire existence was built on a carefully orchestrated lie. He even had a notebook to keep track of the details. His mother was a wily one and while she generally showed very little interest in his business endeavours, he knew that she was just as likely to spot something and ask a series of questions that might lead to…who knows? At worst, his arrest.

“We’ll go and park round the back,” Mark pulled away once more, but not before noticing that nosey Belinda Skipton at her front room window. He couldn’t abide that woman. He had suggested to John one night in The Frog and Cricket that maybe she should get a job, contribute to the family income, and the economy. John had laughed. He was old fashioned, he wanted to be the provider and Belinda wanted to be a mum.

Mark found the whole notion ridiculous. But largely because if he was ever going to get caught by anyone, it would be her. He pretended he hadn’t seen her, though. Deniability and all that.

Ciara sighed again as Mark swerved out into the traffic, up the hill and round the back. He pulled in behind a lorry that was rolling steel barrels of beer down the back alley to The Frog and Cricket. She hated that place, it made her shudder.

“Come on then,” said Mark, opening the car door for her. She liked those little touches at least.

The two of them scuttled past the lorry driver who was now on his return leg with what seemed to be an empty barrel. Brief acknowledgements as, Ciara observed, Mark employed his I’m a businessman persona. That irritated her too. He put on an accent and made remarks about stocks and shares as if to somehow assert his credibility as a financier.

“Great day for some trading, the pound is looking strong today!” he said to the lorry driver as they passed him. Ciara cringed. The driver, if he heard, ignored him. But by the sound of the bass coming out of his ear buds, Ciara doubted very much he had caught Mark’s ridiculous comments.

The alley that ran the length of Stookey Hill behind the shop fronts and houses was like a different world. There were patches of grass, some with clothes lines and wooden benches. Planters and flower pots provided some welcome cheer. The street side of the hill was less than appealing. Ciara lived in the city, but found it to be clean and well-kept. Stookey Hill was neither of those things. There was litter and shop fronts with broken signage. Local youths gathered in the evenings outside the newsagent and drunks gathered outside the pubs. Any and every night of the week. The stench of food waste and vomit was strong when the wind was westerly, blowing right down the hill.

Ciara wasn’t wearing footwear appropriate for picking along the back alley. While it was distinctly brighter than the front, she still had to navigate plastic crates, bins and empty boxes. Her heels, which were almost five inches, got caught occasionally between slabs of concrete tile, sinking into the bits of mud and grass occupying the misshapen spaces.

Mark was well ahead. As ever, a man on a mission. She doubted his abilities most of the time, but she couldn’t fault him for how driven he was. Almost manically.

A wide door swung open just inches ahead of him and a man appeared. He shook hands with Mark and the two started a conversation, to her frustration. This was another habit: he forgot about her. Which was a cheek as well, considering it was her money!

“Hi!” Ciara stuck her hand out to shake hands too. But the recipient looked at her in surprise.

“Who is this?” he said to Mark, with something of a low grow.

“This is C-yara,” she hated that too – how he said her name. There was no Y. Why do you pronounce a Y? She had asked this many times. He didn’t know what she meant. Neanderthal, she would mutter under her breath.

“Who?” the other man lit a cigarette. Dirty habit, Ciara thought, watching the bright red illumination flash and wane as he sucked and puffed.

“Ciara,” she said, firmly and offering her hand once more, “I’m the money.”

That seemed to do the trick, because he took her hands and shook it. Limp, though, she noticed. A pathetic hand shake.

“Has it been done? Does Primrose know?” Mark, despite what seemed to be his best efforts not to look shifty, did so anyway as he looked over his shoulder and then over the other one.

“Shush, shush, shush!” the other man stamped his foot, annoyed that Mark had said her name. That was the problem with him, he always said the wrong thing, or the right thing but loudly. He was a liability.

“Sorry!” Mark, contrite, looked over his shoulders again.

Ciara looked too, but there was no one there. The alley, since the lorry driver with the barrels had finished his exchange, was quiet.

“Come here, away from the door,” Mark walked away from what seemed to be the rear entrance to a shop. He had no idea which one. Maybe Harry’s at a guess. He wasn’t sure, but he was aware he needed to keep some distance with prying ears.

The two followed him up a step and on to the drying green. Ciara sighed in disappointment as her heels sunk into the grass. She tried to stand on her tiptoes.

“She’s no real threat though,” Mark said, wondering if he too should light a cigarette. He didn’t smoke but he had the notion that it might make him look cool.

“How not?” the man was gruff, disbelieving. He had learned the hard way to trust as few people as possible. Most people were threats, in his experience.

Mark laughed. It was sort of like a villainous laugh. At least, his attempt to seem unpleasant and cruel. But he swallowed funny and his saliva made him choke. Ciara slapped him on the back a few times as he went purple, struggling to catch his breath.

“I’ve told you not to do that,” she looked at him. This was what happened when you lived with your mother for decades and decades.

Mark, still coughing, thanked her and tried again to swallow and gather whatever pride he had left back.

“Alan, trust me, Primrose is no threat. There’s a combination of factors to consider, and certainly her job is one of them, but we’ve sorted that out. She’ll be fired,” Mark attempted a smile, his eyes still watering. He wanted to appear confident and in control, but all that coughing had made his throat sore.

“Considering this is all a secret, you boys seem very aure of yourself, discussing it all so loudly,” Ciara was not amused. She had been scanning the back of the buildings and there were so many windows and doors. All that stepping on to the drying green had done was expose them to many eyes, many ears…cowboys.

“Who is this again?” the man pointed once more at Ciara as he stubbed his cigarette on to the pole of a washing line, flicking it to the ground. The damp grass made it sizzle to a smoulder.

“You boys,” Ciara said, “need to sort these meetings out. The park, the cinema, the pub…it’s all too public. Do you think no one can see or hear us?”

The two looked at her. She had no idea what she was talking about. Mark had been running shady deals for years and as for the other one – he was new to it all for sure, ever since his windfall. But he hadn’t been caught. And he had no intention of getting caught any time soon, either.

“This is not my first game of chess,” he said, puffing his chest out a little. He still wasn’t entirely sure who Ciara was, or why they actually even needed her money. He still had enough of his own.

“Maybe not, Mr Limpton,” Ciara looked at him with as much contempt as she could muster, “but it’s not mine either. And if you two don’t start listening to me, then…”

Ciara was interrupted by the gentle bang of a door and the three of them looked towards the shops, the houses, alarmed. Where had it come from? Where had there been an open door? Who had been there, and what did they know?

Sighing, Ciara made her way back towards the car.

They were most definitely cowboys and no matter how many games of ‘chess’ they had played, they were going to get her in some serious trouble if she didn’t take matters into her own hands.