To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

novels by R.P. Phillips, don’t you? A favourite is he?”

“Not really. People used to give me copies.” Both these sentences were factual.

“Detective novels,” said Joseph whom I was to call Sej I said nothing but walked on into the kitchen.

Opening the freezer I removed a couple of steaks. I employ the microwave seldom. It had been a present from Harris one Christmas, the only time he had ever given me a present actually. I’d always been slightly perplexed by it, but it had its uses. As now.

The kitchen clock told me it was five to six. Normally I don’t eat until seven, or later.

In my pocket the knife shifted, and the soporific thumb.

He had followed me in and put the book on the table. He watched me, leaning on the units. “Have you read that?”

“What? Treasure Island? Yes, two or three times.”

“Boys’ adventure yarn,” he said.

“It’s a bit more than that. You ought to try it sometime.”

“I have. I couldn’t get through it. Perhaps I should try R.P. Phillips instead.”

He knew. How the hell – Ah. I recalled the dreary little photo of me, reproduced on one or two editions ten years ago. I hadn’t changed that much, only got older.

He said, “You know, you ought to shave your head.”

“Really.”

“It’d look better. Make you look stronger.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“What are we eating, Daddy?” he asked.

This phrase, his playful tone, made my blood run cold. I thought, You’re having my best Sainsbury’s steak and M and S salad and red wine, if I can get you to drink it, with five or six sleeping pills.

“What you see,” I said. “I usually have some wine with dinner. Do you drink wine?”

A smile. “Yes.”

“Red OK? It’s over there in the cupboard. Glasses next shelf up. Get a couple of bottles. We’ll have a glass now.”

“Two bottles. That’s lavish.”

“I don’t often have guests.”

If he was wary of this first crack in my armour I wasn’t sure, but he lifted two of the three bottles of decentish plonk from the cupboard, and when I handed him the corkscrew he opened one, driving the spike straight in through the cork and the foil wrapper, which is what I usually do myself.

“Just a minute,” I said, “before you pour.” I got the kitchen scissors and used the serrated part between the handles and blades to slice off the neck of the remaining foil. Lynda had done things like that.

Joseph looked amused.

I said, “Yes, pedantic I know, but sometimes bits of foil go in the wine otherwise.”

He poured us a glass each and I let him. I wondered, as I raised mine to my mouth, if he had dropped something in it. But I didn’t think so. I had to presume he preferred me awake and on tenterhooks.

The steaks cooked and the salad was on two plates. I put knives and forks and mustard on the table, and some kitchen towel for napkins. Oh, gracious living.

We sat down either side, with the table still pushed up against the kitchen door. He hadn’t suggested we move it, nor had I. It would, of course, make any escape that way harder to achieve.

The second bottle of wine stood at the end of the table, with the corkscrew beside it; I’d placed the scissors there too.

He had already consumed glass one of the untainted wine. That was excellent. I remembered how he had been in the pub, downing a double gin or vodka, setting the glass ready for more. I refilled his glass.

“Cheers,” I said. I made out my swallows of wine had relaxed me a little. It doesn’t take great acting, that sort of thing.

“Well, here’s to your books,” he said. I knew he didn’t mean the library.

“You spotted the photo,” I said.

“Couldn’t miss it. You haven’t changed much. A bit less hair that’s all.”

I learnt early, about twenty-five, to ride the comments on my galloping baldness.

I said, “I’m not especially proud of them, those books.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh – I write them like a kind of machine, to pay the bills. I find them quite interesting when I’m writing them. But afterwards – they’re hardly profound literature.”

“You set your standards too high,” he said. “Don’t people buy them?”

“A few. Enough I make a modest living.”

He ate eagerly and quickly, but in a mannerly way, just as I’d seen him do with the breakfast.

It had been borne in on me by now he wasn’t starved through impoverishment, merely had a healthy appetite. He could afford after all to stay at the dodgy pub, which I had heard wasn’t cheap. He could pick up on a mad whim, and follow a man, even buy him a dustbin.

This time he refilled my glass, only half empty, as well as fully topping up his vacant own. I’d have to watch that, when we came to the next bottle.

“Funny your wife hasn’t called,” he said.

It was time to wax a little mellow. I hoped I had calculated properly, but a move must be made.

“I’d better own up, hadn’t I, Sej.”

When I used his purported nickname, I glanced at him to see how he took it, both the name and my ‘owning up’.

He looked smug. He might not be a fool, the mad cannot be relied on to be stupid, often the reverse. But he was solipsistic, over-confident – perhaps with good reason.

“So what’s the dark secret, Roy?”

“Lynda left me, oh, about seven months ago. That’s why my neighbours didn’t mention her. As for George and Vita, if they believed you were my son they’d assume you knew, and that perhaps you had some real cause to worry about me, my state of mind. It was after she broke her leg. She met some man at the physiotherapy sessions. I also met him once. A fat chap with a long moustache and mop of hair. He was older than me, too. Nearly sixty. She told me the night she left. I hadn’t guessed a thing, but no doubt it wouldn’t have mattered. As for my son…” I