Babble And Squeak

Mark Kotting

Description

Joe Carhill knows fish and chips. Running the Codfather with his wife, Joy believes he needs a break - and could anywhere be better than a secret retreat? The answer would be yes. Run by city-hustler turned Guru, Dave, plagued by wind-up merchant, Raymond, Joe somehow finds himself on a greasy slope into grief, pain and being labeled a murderer. With a bad year looking to turn into something unthinkakbly worse, he has to rely on his loyal wife, daughter - whose secret life finds an increasingly large audience - and a borrowed night-time prayer as he looks for the timeless hope of redemption.

Sujets

• Quirky
• Redemption
• Illness
• Black comedy
• Marriage
• Fish and chips
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 27 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781907756153
• Langue: English

Extrait

Babble and Squeak

Mark Kotting
Legend Press Ltd, 2 London Wall Buildings, London EC2M 5UU info legend-paperbooks.co.uk www.legendpress.co.uk

Contents Mark Kotting 2010

The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has be asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-9065581-6-1

All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Set in Times

Printed by JF Print Ltd., Sparkford.

Cover designed by Gudrun Jobst www.yotedesign.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
With thanks as always to My Trace, Blue Peter
Contents
Babble.
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Squeak
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the author
Babble.
Drive carefully.
A kiss, a wave and off Joe Carhill drives.
Him and his car need an oil change. It happens, life gets around the throat, chokes away the smile, the years, leaves you with nothing but a frown for a friend.
Well, that s what Joy, his wife, thinks in the year his brother and mother died.
Joy watches Joe s departing neck, turns, goes inside. She keeps a tidy ship, no dust on her lintels, no spit on the hob, clean is how she likes it, keeps it. Clean, clean, clean; Joy s madness.
What s wrong with that? What s a woman who doesn t keep things clean? Her pants, her armpits, her bra, her thoughts? What s a woman who walks around in fur, hitching her skirt a little higher every year til it meets her pants; that s not Joy s style. She leaves that for others, she s got a good eye and she sees.
She d been brought up properly, the right way, by her mum s tender, loving hands. Tarts had dirty homes and dirty men. Men who d piss on seats, leave it for wives to clean up. Her Joe Carhill wasn t like that, he sat when he took his pee and replaced the lid afterwards. He didn t leave a slug s trail; it had taken some training, but he d mastered it. She d smiled the day he finally had.
There s a cedar tree growing out of Joy s mum now, a snappable sapling, daffodils come and go out of her dead dad. Good people, honest people, no need for pamphlets on manners for them.
The Carhills, Joe and Joy are at the age when they know plenty of dead; cars, cancers, toppers and old age, pulling people under, taking away their souls. And under the sheets at night, they worry who will be left with the loneliness, the half empty bed, the extra pillow to use, unable to share things of the heart in the darkness. It will be one of them, unless they decide to take themselves out in a head on, or a high cliff job. Joe s thought about that more than once; bad days, dark days, days that sit heavy on his chest.
Joy bends, she has a scar running under the band of her bra (left side) hidden from the light. She puts her slippers on, bought from a catalogue the week before and closes the door on the world, her slippered feet taking her to where she wants to go next. She punches the digits, looks at her fingers and waits His phone rings, he leans over, fumbles then picks it up.
I m missing you already, don t ever forget that.
Who is this?
Your wife, you silly fool.
They were hardly ever apart so rarely needed to phone each other. He never recognised her voice on a phone.
Try to relax and enjoy yourself and, and forget about the bloody fish. Joy says.
I m not sure about this love?
Joe still doesn t know where he s going or why, and he doesn t feel right.
Joy seemed to think it was a good idea and he trusts her. So here he is with a map, directions and a number to ring if he gets lost. There s an envelope he s allowed to open after he s been driving for two hours, no sooner than that - Joy will ring when the two hours have passed.
He wants to open it now, he doesn t like tricks. Tricks are for pranksters and timewasters.
Come on love, where am I going?
You ll see.
And he will, but he ll just have to wait.
They don t wear wedding rings, they could do, they re more than entitled to, but they get in the way of the batter, the fat. If fat gets trapped, it burns, simple as that. So no rings on fingers, no showing of the band but they are married, body soul and mind. They have each other, and they hold on tight at night.
Joe smiles, she s a good woman, my woman, he thinks, as he touches the envelope, drives past a fat kid eating a cake. Joe shakes his head. And she is, his Joy is a good woman.
What had he said to her today, after he d come?
That s alright for me, but what about you love?
They still made love, took the plunge, not like the old days, they knew their positions.
Joe was lying on his back, the whole episode was over and done with in four minutes and that included the walk up the stairs. It had been quick, it normally was. That part of Joe had never slowed down.
My treat.
Joy said and it was, it was her departing treat to her Joe. Cleaning the tubes she called it. She d read about prostate cancer and how it was good for men to clean them regularly, especially when approaching your sixties.
Sex to them was like eating without laying the table, nothing fancy, no napkins or dressing up; they d tried, but it wasn t for them. They d made many decisions midway through. Good decisions, decisions they d stuck by.
Joe and Joy have been married 37 years now, that was something to be proud of, something to slip out at a party.
You ve been married that long? No, you don t look old enough. Not that they went to many parties. But they d been to a few.
They had one child, if a 32-year-old can be classed as that. She d taken a long time to arrive. She still was a child in their eyes, she d always be one. And if Joy closed her eyes, which she did normally in the bath on a Sunday, the final day of a long week, the very same day her Jackie was born, she could still remember the pain.
Every first name in the Carhill family begins with a J. Not for any particular reason. Joe met Joy then they had Jackie. Jackie wanted a dog and they got Jake.
They d received a letter from Jackie earlier that morning. The postman, a failed inventor, had put it through the door.
For the first time in my life I m happy, truly happy, it s as if a light has been turned on or maybe I ve just found the switch. I just wanted you both to know and also to tell you that I love you.
The PS:
It s great what you re doing for dad, he must really need it.
It said other things but that s the gist.
Jackie wrote letters that went on and on. Joe found himself skip reading them, skip reading his own daughter s letters; he didn t like to, but he found himself doing it. What he didn t realise was that Joy did the same, it was a secret they both kept from each other.
Jackie, their daughter, has found herself a new circle of friends and is busy being a teacher. She s good at it, she s a natural she s been told, and the kids seem to like her. It said all this in the letter, and how she d be coming back for Christmas. On and on it went, six sides in total. Why didn t she use the phone like normal kids her age, Joe always wondered. But no, Jackie liked to write. She d write the letter usually at the very same time her mother had her eyes closed in the bath. Neither of them knew this fact but it existed.
There are things Joe and Joy don t know about Jackie and one of them is that she once put plastic cups around the front room to make it look like she d had friends over for a party. But she hadn t. Her parents popped home after the Saturday lunch session and asked her if she d had a good birthday party, what with the mess around. They were excited, happy (if a little ashamed to have missed it).
But she hadn t had a party.
Good Party?
Joe asked.
Yeah great. Look how many friends came.
She smiled, raised her eyes and then said.
What a party.
The Carhill s looked at the cups. Joe ran his hands through his daughter s hair and kissed her on the cheek.
I m sorry we missed it love, promise it won t happen again.
But it did, work alwa