Jennifer discovered him perhaps fifteen minutes later, Sheridan was cross-legged on the bathroom floor cradling his head in his hands. And she couldn’t be positive but it seemed that he was mumbling, ‘It’s not my fucking fault,’ over and over and over.
All doubts and all hopes vaporized. Disturbance was afoot. There was unquestionably something very wrong with her husband.
Thanks to the storm much of the heat and oppression of Friday had been rinsed from the air. And as Sheridan strolled down the hill towards the newsagent’s a mixture of tiredness, relief and good humour mingled into an agreeable feeling that he might almost have described as postcoital. Several of the people who passed bade him a good morning. Yet as they would later recount Sheridan seemed to be unaware of them – as if something weighty were on his mind.
Indeed, this was so.
Sheridan Entwhistle was plotting a crime.
‘Good morning,’ smiled the newsagent.
‘Indeed it is, Mr Khan. Indeed it is.’
Sheridan slid a Croydon Chronical from the pile on Mr Khan’s counter. His heart was clattering and the sweat of his thumb stained the paper. Moreover, he had no idea why he was about to do this. Quite simply, the notion had presented itself to him, and, like the suggestion of visiting the bathroom in the small hours, he found that he had no choice about things.
‘In fact, Mr Khan, it is such a fine day that I detect an aberration coming on.’ Mr Khan raised an eyebrow. ‘Twenty Benson and Hedges, please.’
As the newsagent turned and reached up for the cigarettes, Sheridan adeptly snatched a Kit-Kat from the adjacent display and interred it in his jacket pocket.
‘On second thoughts, filthy bloody habit. Scrap the cigarettes, Mr Khan.’ He paid for the paper, they exchanged parting smiles and he exited.
As Sheridan’s face met the fresh air a fantastic elation surged through him and the sweat that had more or less sodden his shirt chilled wonderfully. He hadn’t the first clue why he’d committed the daft felony, yet it felt so satisfactory. As he trekked slowly back up the hill he thought with irony of the sign in Mr Khan’s door that read, Only two schoolboys at a time.
… and what exactly is the point of, like, revising something I already know?’ he heard Folucia object as he entered his front door.
‘Look, Folucia. Look …’ his wife spluttered impotently.
‘It’s my bloody life, Mummy. Besides, I’m leaving home on my sixteenth birthday and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it. So put that in your pipe …’
‘Perhaps, young lady, you’d like to put that one to your father.’
He walked into the kitchen and the women scowled at him. Ignoring them, he bent down to greet Hogarth who was wiping his mottled head over Sheridan’s feet and shins.
‘He’s lying. He’s been fed,’ said Jennifer matter-of-factly.
Sheridan didn’t look up. Instead he pulled the Kit-Kat from his jacket and handed it to Folucia.
‘What’s that for?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘It’s a bribe,’ he answered.
‘Bribe?’
‘Yes, my dear. I’d like you to do me a small favour, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Favour. What favour?’
‘Well Folucia, I’d very much like you to tell your mother that I’ve given you a thorough going over. You know, explained that I think you’re a selfish, immature brat, that you take us for granted, that you’re deceitful, ill-mannered and …’
Folucia reddened, then forcibly regained her composure.
‘And I treat this house like a hotel.’
‘That’s the ticket.’
‘Well, Daddy, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m checking out on my sixteenth birthday.’
‘I see,’ said her father calmly.
‘What do you mean … I see?’ she mumbled. He didn’t need to look up to sense her eyes fill. ‘Are you … are you … throwing me out?’
Sheridan said nothing and sat down. He unhinged a dry piece of toast from the rack and began to nibble on it, masticating and forcing the shards into his dry throat. Folucia began to stammer. Still Sheridan maintained his cool.
It was Jennifer who broke.
‘Of course not,’ she announced, laying a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘We’re doing nothing of the sort.’
‘He,’ Folucia growled, pointing at Sheridan, ‘wants me out, doesn’t he?’
Sheridan remained silent.
‘He wants nothing of the sort, darling. Do you, Sherry?’
‘Well, Folucia,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, if you’re unhappy, here. If our moderate existence in some way offends …’
‘Sheridan Entwhistle, stop it this instant.’
Sheridan grinned to himself and returned to his toast eating.
They pulled over before the slip road to the A1 (M), wrestled out of their heavy coats and slipped into the Babylon bibs.
The Babylon bib had been Jayne’s invention, and as inventions went it was unrivalled by just about anything Yantra had managed to come up with to reduce the inevitable hassles of this way of life. Originally hessian sacks, the bibs had had head-holes cut out and the façade of respectable clothing sewn to the fronts. Thus any Babylon (police) eyeballing them on the motorway would witness a gentleman in a shirt and tie with his long hair hitched neatly back, driving the Bedford, and a woman in a high-necked Laura Ashley number, with albeit unconventional hair, accompanying him.
Prior to the bibs, Yantra would have expected to be pulled over two if not three times on a long motorway journey such as this one – and depending on what type of mood he was in, have his drugs stolen, his van shamelessly criticized and even be forced to listen to crap about the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and the Criminal Law Act 1977.
Since adopting the bibs, they’d only been tugged once and then the policemen found them so funny that it completely slipped their minds to harass them. Painting over the anarchy symbol, fuck the system, and the other brightly painted messages of peace possibly helped matters. These days he didn’t even need to bother with Biddy’s fascist paperwork.
Yantra and Jayne were making their annual journey to London because, compared to virtually anywhere else in the country, its streets and subways really were paved with gold. Not that they intended making their fortunes, but nothing was worse than being at Glastonbury too indigent to get truly wankered out of their skulls. Alas, life required money, but as Yantra often pointed out one can also get greedy on poverty. Money was unquestionably a mu topic – a negative which is beyond negative and positive. And stealing or begging for modest amounts was The Middle Way, and perfectly consonant with the noble path.
And there was another matter. Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was genuinely familial, though he hoped to God not. He couldn’t know. Still, year on year, the gnawing deepened. Of course, he’d said nothing to Jayne. Nor did he intend to until the groundwork had been done. For Yantra well knew that speaking to a woman about a child and introducing her to one were entirely different matters. Entirely different.
He pulled into the slow lane and unbuttoned his trousers. Jayne smiled nervously and arched down on him. She tried to recall when he’d last had an opportunity to wash and wondered at his reaction to her refusing. To Yantra, fingernail grime, armpit stench, flatulence and just about every other foul thing the body is capable of producing, were human and natural and thus warranted a certain earthy reverence. She half wondered whether he felt