Untangled

Whenever James applied himself to a task, he went about it methodically with patience and care. He never undertook a job of work he was ill-suited for, so his practised movements might have fooled a person unfamiliar with his personality into thinking he was a skilful, dexterous sort of man, but he was not.

He liked coffee because it was simple, yet Jenny only drank tea, and this was why he’d made a mess of the tray as he scooped her tea bag out of the mug and flipped it into the bin. He’d never made tea before.

James removed the milk jug, the sugar bowl and his cup of coffee from the tray. He fetched a clean tea towel from the kitchen draw, lifted up the jam jar he was using as a makeshift cup for Jenny and wiped the bottom of it. After that, he mopped up the tea he’d spilt on the tray and replaced each object one by one.

There was a groan from the parlour. He’d have to think of a solution to that, but he had plenty of time to come up with something. He only received four or five visitors a year, and none of them set foot past the front door.

Additionally, the parlour was at the back of the house overlooking the gardens, so the occasional irrepressible solicitor or Jehovah’s witness wasn’t likely to hear the groaning or any other sound Jenny made during her stay.

ONE HOUR EARLIER

Jennifer opened the door without knocking. They were well past that now, but her confident, easy going behaviour was affected. This building gave her the creeps, and so did James. She checked her smile in the hallway mirror as she passed. It appeared fixed and glassy, but he wouldn’t notice, and if he did, he wouldn’t care.

“It’s only me!” she called, drifting towards the back of the house.

She hesitated at the door to his grandmother’s dreadful parlour. It was obvious to Jennifer that he never spent any time there. His life was an endless circuit between work, kitchen and bed, so why he’d been compelled to court her in this hideous room, she couldn’t guess.

He wasn’t in there, but he was definitely home. Where else would he be? She perched on the heavy, threadbare chair beneath the window and, lacking a television or any other source of art and entertainment to peruse, settled her eyes on the mantelpiece.

His hatchet-faced grandmother had loved gimcrack ornamentation, and every surface was crowded with these ghastly objects without a hint of theme or taste. The old hag herself glared at Jennifer disapprovingly from a silver frame at the centre of this huddled pottery. Jennifer scowled back at her.

She yelped in pain as strong fingers grabbed a handful of her thick hair. She’d made a mistake. At some crucial junction, she’d let something slip. How had he caught on? How dare he frighten her like this over nothing?

She attempted to push him away in outrage, but he refused to relinquish his grip, and the reality of the situation washed over like icy water. He’d been lying in wait for her. He had nasty creepy plans for her. She never should have let things go this far.

He was wrapping wire around her neck and chest. Loop after loop he threaded around her torso and the back of his grandmother’s chair while Jennifer scratched and cursed at him, but he was as oblivious to her attacks as he was to basic social cues.

“Why are you doing this, Jim?” she sobbed in a last ditch appeal as he began his work on her right arm. “Let me go.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her quietly as he bound her wrist to the heavy wooden arm of the chair with the stiff wire. “I’ve forgiven you, Jenny, and I’m going to be nice to you. I promise.”

ONE DAY EARLIER

Jennifer felt out of place. They were eating in a restaurant above the store they’d been exploring all morning, but the other customers had only one or two bags with them, and these could be discreetly stashed under tables or chairs. Her own chair was surrounded by a dozen various bags, and some of them were misshapen and awkward. The widescreen in particular may have been a step to far.

She felt as if everyone present could see the situation for exactly what it was except poor James. He wasn’t ugly, but he was weird, clumsy and shy. He was the sort of strange, middle-aged man you didn’t want your kids to talk to even if you were ninety-nine per cent sure he was harmless. She shouldn’t have stopped for dinner.

“Didn’t you like your steak?” she asked.

She always had to initiate conversation. At the beginning, she’d entertained notions of a long term relationship with James that petered out towards a natural end, but boredom and desperation brought out her nasty side, and she was making plans to usher the process along.

“Don’t like steak,” he mumbled neutrally.

“Then why did you order it?” She’d meant it to sound playful, but it came out exasperated and strident.

He shook his head. That was James’s version of ‘I don’t know’. His eyes popped each time as though terrified she’d force him to speak his mind. She watched him with contempt while he slunk his head low to take another mouthful, but she straightened her features before he looked back in her general direction.

“I need to borrow some money,” she began, her volume low and conspiratorial.

She didn’t want any of the ladies nearby to overhear her. She’d have been mortified.

“More money,” James said flatly.

Sometimes he did this. He seemed clueless, but every now and then he revealed a shrewd side that left her stuttering. What if he knew she didn’t love him and he simply didn’t care? Loneliness could drive people to endure some fairly extreme setbacks in a relationship.

“Forget it,” she said lightly. “You’ve done enough for me, and I love you for that. There are other people I can ask.”

He placed a piece of cold, dry steak between his grey teeth and chewed thoughtfully.

“How much?”

She wanted to keep it low, but he was annoying her. He was the most unbearable, tedious wretch she’d ever been lumbered with, and if she was going to spend another minute in his company, he’d have to make it worth her while.

“Five.”

He nodded slowly, although that wasn’t ascent. It was just part of his routine. His dull, flitting eyes betrayed his internal turmoil. Maybe he’d finally run out of cash.

“I was going to take out a loan,” she prompted, “but my credit rating is in tatters from before.”

“A loan,” he parroted, sensing the light at the end of the tunnel.

“You could be my guarantor, or you could get the loan and I could pay you back.”

He was breathing hard now. Why had she asked for so much? She was greedy and reckless. She’d underestimated him. Foreign beaches wavered and faded in her mind’s eye while she awaited his verdict. At least she’d be going to bed alone tonight. Her sense of dignity needed the space to recover.

“Jen!”

Jenifer spun around in her seat. It was Bailey, the biggest smack rat for five miles around, and she was coming over for a chinwag. God knows what she was doing in such a nice clean restaurant. She’d probably followed them in to see what she could scrounge.

“Hi, Bailey,” Jennifer croaked, managing a weak smile.

Bailey looked particularly scruffy today. There was a scab above her left eye, her hair was greasy and her clothes reeked. Jennifer was looking good these days, but Bailey was born a scumbag to her core. She took a seat uninvited and flashed a rotten smile at James.

The man was flabbergasted, but he wasn’t gaping at Bailey as she picked over his food. His eyes were locked onto Jennifer, and they were broadcasting betrayal loud and clear. He was usually so difficult to read that this uncharacteristic reaction was jarring for her.

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said falteringly, trying her best to laugh Bailey’s intrusion off. “She’s got no manners.”

Her words had no impact. James was frozen; he sat motionless with eyes still bulging and radiating hurt. Even witless, tactless Bailey was beginning to sense there was something wrong with the happy couple. She shot Jennifer a quizzical sneer. As if the specimens Bailey frequently attached herself to were any better.

ONE WEEK EARLIER

The house would have been nice if it wasn’t so dreary. His dead granny’s personality was stamped on every corner of it, but it had grown dusty and grubby during James’s term as a lonely bachelor, and the ‘parlour’, as James put it, had a disused smell.

“Those ornaments are nice,” Jennifer lied, nodding towards the mantelpiece.

James said nothing. He watched her gormlessly with his lips slightly parted. Jennifer could never tell whether he was love-struck or just plain dim. He was the most inscrutable man she’d ever stumbled through a conversation with.

The chair was uncomfortable. You only found oblong monstrosities like these in the homes of the elderly nowadays. It was a threadbare dun colour with thin, flattened cushions and a high, straight back. There were three of them in the parlour, so this was probably the previous generation’s version of a three piece suite, those poor sods.

James was hunched over and perched on the edge of his own seat with his coffee cup clasped between his hands. Four sugars and no milk. Her own cup was an old jar. She didn’t care, but why hadn’t he offered the guest the only mug in the house. Why didn’t he buy a second mug? Either she’d bitten off more than she could chew with James, or she’d struck gold.

He hadn’t wanted her to visit his humble home. He’d wanted to take her out shopping or dining again, but Jennifer was starting to feel strangely, intensely beholden to him. He asked for nothing in return for his largesse, and this attitude had been refreshing initially, but without sex in the picture, James had the upper hand. She wouldn’t have seen things that way a fortnight ago, but Jennifer had never come across a beau who wanted so little form her before.

“What’s the upstairs like?” she asked.

He shook his head. That meant he didn’t know the answer to her query, which was ridiculous. How the hell was she supposed to get him in bed if he couldn’t tell the difference between an open invitation and polite conversation.

“What’s your bedroom like?” she tried again with as much emphasis on the word ‘bedroom’ as was decent.

“Messy,” he admitted. “I work a lot, so I don’t have much time left for tidying.”

Jennifer had once slept on a piss stained mattress underneath a fire escape behind a pub, but James didn’t know that.

“We could have gone to mine,” she offered.

He’d dropped her off several times, but he’d never escorted her inside. At the beginning, she’d assumed he was nervous about leaving his vehicle out on the estate and rightly so, but over time, Jennifer had realised he was cripplingly shy.

“What about your kids?” he said, frowning slightly.

She gave him a confused look. “I don’t have kids.”

Silence descended. He didn’t want to disagree, but he clearly had a bee in his bonnet about this. Her mind raced. Had she told him she had kids. So many lies to keep track of, but under normal circumstances, she only had to remember them for fifteen minutes at most. She tried not to let her irritation at his deceptive acuity show.

“Their father has them for most of the year,” she hastily concocted. “His mother, actually. He’s not capable of taking care of them by himself. He’s not a good guy, when all’s said and done.”

James nodded slowly. She couldn’t stand his reticence at times like this. No indication of whether he was swallowing what she was saying. For all she knew, he might not give a damn what tales she told him. Some men were like that, especially the desperately lonely ones, but she didn’t like the thought of him secretly thinking her a liar.

“So you could stay here…if you wanted.”

Finally. A sign that he had something down those shiny trousers other than a pair of hairy ankles. She smiled at him innocently and sipped her jar of tea.

“If I wanted,” she said agreeably, an unexpected tingle of arousal warming her blood.

ONE MONTH EARLIER

James felt a flutter of guilt standing there examining the dead fox. Once again, he looked around the car park to make sure nobody was watching him. What he was doing was morbid, but if nobody saw, he didn’t care.

He was proud in a way. Not of his handiwork. He’d fixed the fencing at the carp park half a dozen times over the years, and it was one of those things he’d become comfortingly proficient at. He was proud that something he’d done in this sterile, uncaring world had effected on another living thing.

He’d fixed the fence, and the fox had choked to death between the taut wire James had used. If James had never been born, the animal would still be alive. Was there a more honest tribute to a one’s weight on the world than that?

 He loped back to his booth to fetch a spade and a bin bag, and he spotted the woman. She’d been partially concealed, so he’d been unable to see her from the fence. Had she been watching him? The nosy fat cow. Why didn’t she just mind her own business?

“Can I help you?” he mumbled.

He didn’t have to talk to members of the public very often in this job, and that was fine by him. Sometimes the drivers would ask about opening hours or complain about the machine eating their money, but these situations had a script to them that had become seared into his brain by time, and they were exhilarating in a way. James rarely spoke to pedestrians.

“Yes you can,” she said, smiling at him disarmingly. “My car broke down, and I’ve got to be halfway across town in five minutes. I have to pick my kids up from school.”

He didn’t know how to respond. He certainly couldn’t fix her car. People sometimes thought he knew something about cars because he wore a high vis jacket and worked in a car park, and those encounters could be agonisingly embarrassing.

“I’ll have to catch a bus,” she continued, her tone shedding most of its enthusiasm during the pause, “and I need some bus fare, and I left home without my purse this morning. I’m desperate.”

She touched his arm, and he flinched away. To cover this drastic reaction, he pulled out his chunky old mobile and offered it to her.

“You can use this if you like.”

She glared at him as though he were making fun of her. What had he said?

“I’m deaf,” she said shortly. “I can’t use phones.”

James nodded slowly. He could see how that would be a hindrance. She must be reading his lips right now, but she couldn’t read lips over the phone. Not over his phone, anyway. James didn’t do the internet and all that stuff.

“I was hoping you could lend me some money,” she prompted. “Enough for a ticket.”

James blinked in a astonishment. He had some change in his booth. It wasn’t much, but he liked to be prepared, and his preparation had paid off this time. He liked having the correct solution to a simple problem. He reached through his open window and pulled out the tin. The woman eyed it hungrily.

“How much is a ticket?” he asked, yanking off the stiff lid with a rattle of loose coins.

The woman shrugged, fixated by the picture of shortbread on the side of his money tin. “Twenty pounds.”

That was surprising. Bus tickets were expensive these days, but she’d said she was only going across town.

“It’s a return,” she explained, licking her lips.

“A return,” he repeated.

“Yeah. I’ve got to come back to repay you.” She said it as if it was a joke.

“You don’t have to come back,” he said, fumbling at the coins with a gloved hand. “To repay me, I mean. I know you’ve got your car.”

“What car?” she asked, her forehead creasing.

He didn’t know what to say. Was she drunk? She looked like the type of woman who drank. Nana used to drink a lot, and she’d often forget small unimportant things, but a car was a car. They were too big to overlook. He scanned the car park as though he might identify her vehicle by its refusal to work properly.

“Oh, my car,” she said, grinning manically. “It’s not here. It’s parked a few streets away. I just thought I’d stop and ask you for help because you looked so nice.”

She held out two cupped hands, and he poured the contents of his money tin into them in response. She thought he was nice. James wasn’t nice. He knew this for a fact. He was surly, secretive and creepy. It was the reason why he had no friends or loved ones. It wouldn’t take her long to realise she’d made a mistake, but for now, it felt good to bask in her misconception.

He tossed the empty tin back into his booth, and it clattered noisily onto the floor making him cringe. The woman retrieved a purse from her bag and stuffed the change inside. James cocked his head in a puzzled way, and she noticed.

“What?” she demanded.

James shook his head vigorously. “Nothing.”