Two Dark Tales Read online

  Two Dark Tales:

  Jack Squat

  and

  The Niche

  Charles Lambert

  Aardvark Bureau

  London

  An imprint of Gallic Books

  Contents

  Title Page

  Jack Squat

  1

  2

  3

  The Niche

  1

  2

  3

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Jack Squat

  1

  They saw the first house from the car, through a film of rain, while looking for a farm that sold cold-pressed oil from its own olives in the hills behind the cork forest. But the instructions they had been given were vague: a bar with tables outside, a turning to the left beside an abandoned barn, an upstanding rock with a dab of red paint on one side. Three times, they’d ended up on a road that petered out in open countryside, and had to turn back and try again. They were about to head home, tired, irritated, hungry, when the rain lifted and a shaft of unexpected sunlight struck a window high to the right of the road, some fifty metres up from where they were, the slope fractured by outcrops of white rock. Gordon pulled over. ‘Look at that,’ he said. Omar looked. Five minutes later, breathless after the brief climb, they were standing outside the door.

  The house was on the side of a hill, on a shelf of rough coarse grass between one steep rise and the next. It was built of stone, darkened by the rain, paler where a gutter had protected it or the single nearby tree provided shelter. The side of the house that faced the road below had a door to one side of the façade and a window to its right, with another four windows arranged symmetrically above. This pattern was repeated, they discovered as they walked around the house, on all four sides. The roof had a low pitch, but seemed, from the ground at least, to be intact. The ground-floor windows were boarded up, but one of the shutters had worked loose at a hinge and was hanging lopsidedly against the wall, which gave them the chance to look inside. The room they could see was square, as the house was square, apart from the innermost corner, which was set at an odd diagonal to the rest of the room. There was a fireplace against the far wall that appeared to have been recently used. A wooden chair stood in front of it, beside an upturned bucket with an ashtray and an empty glass. Despite these signs of use, the room looked cold. There was no way out of the room apart from the outside door on the wall to the right and a narrow staircase opposite the fireplace. They walked round the house again, squinting through cracks in the shutters, and saw that this pattern too was repeated from room to room. Fireplace on one wall, on the other a rickety wooden staircase, with no connecting doors between the four rooms on the ground floor, as though the house were a squared-off bundle of identical three-storeyed towers, each tower facing outward, ignoring the rest, each with its door and set of five shuttered windows and bevelled-off corner at the hub of the building.

  ‘It’s like a massive Rubik’s cube,’ said Omar, stepping back half a dozen paces to look at the house from a distance once again, the wet grass squeaking beneath his shoes.

  ‘Or one of those blocks of ice cream, do you remember?’ said Gordon. ‘If you look at it from above. Neapolitan, was it?’

  ‘Angel cake,’ said Omar half an hour later, as they parked beneath their own house. It had started to rain again as soon as they got back into the car. ‘That’s what it was like. Like a thick slice of upended angel cake.’

  Gordon sniffed. ‘We never had bought cake when I was young. My mother wouldn’t let it through the door.’

  ‘Ah well, we were never that genteel. I don’t suppose you even had a lounge, did you?’

  They kept this up for much of the evening. It wasn’t until they were both in bed that either of them mentioned the house.

  ‘I’d love a place like that,’ said Omar.

  ‘So would I,’ said Gordon. But he was lying.

  Three weeks later Gordon had a call from Cathy, a friend of theirs who still lived in London. She was phoning on behalf of a man she’d worked with while making a commercial for nappies. ‘He’s Dutch,’ she said, ‘and he’s looking for a house in your part of Italy. I gave him your number. I hope you don’t mind. I thought you might be able to make a bit of money out of it.’

  ‘You see me as an estate agent?’

  ‘Well, desperate times, desperate remedies. I know it hasn’t been easy since you lost your job. I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Gordon, although she had, a little. He didn’t need to be reminded he’d earned nothing for the past six months. Had Omar spoken to her, he wondered, moaned behind his back about the lack of money coming in? Cathy was always more Omar’s friend than his. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘It’s like that writer, you know, something like Notebook; I can never remember how to pronounce it. C-E-E-S. I think you’re supposed to say Case.’

  ‘As in, I’m on yours.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’ She giggled. ‘Look, I’d better go. I’m calling from work. You aren’t angry with me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. He put the phone down and wrote on the pad beside it when the whole world is on your case, then crossed it out.

  ‘Who was that?’ said Omar, coming in from his study, empty mug in hand. He’ll expect me to wash that for him, thought Gordon.

  ‘Cathy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You remember that house we saw? When we went to get the oil?’

  Omar shuddered. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I wonder who it belongs to.’

  ‘We can’t afford it, darling.’

  ‘I’m not thinking of us. Darling. Cathy has a friend.’

  Buying their oil in bulk was only one of the ways they’d planned to save money. Neither Omar nor Gordon had thought when they rented a house in this small town south of Rome that one of them might lose his job. But Gordon’s endlessly renewable contract with a UN agency in the capital had not, after all, been renewed and the chatter of crisis that was nothing more than background noise to their lives soon began to drown out all other conversation between them. They cut down on their drinking, which helped, but not enough, and bought their vegetables by the season. They roasted a turkey leg, the cheapest meat they could find, but the ligaments or whatever they were that stuck out of the flesh like plastic spills put them both off trying one again. It was warm enough, just, to only need to heat the house for an hour or two each day. Gordon would turn the boiler off and then catch Omar sneaking across to the thermostat to turn it back on. He’d bite his tongue; it wasn’t his money, after all, that would pay the bill. Omar was the earner, as long as people needed their websites tweaked. But that didn’t make it all right. Nothing made it all right. Gordon spent most mornings on the net, looking for editing work. In the afternoons, he’d slope off to the bedroom for a siesta, pretending to be asleep when Omar opened the door and then, after a moment, closed it again. He resented cooking, and resented even more the resigned expression on Omar’s face when the cooking was left to him. In the kitchen together, they bumped into each other, reaching across for the bread board or the colander, closing the fridge door on each other’s faces. Gordon, by accident one day, had pushed his vegetable knife into the ball of Omar’s thumb. They used to work so well as a team, Gordon thought, or was that never true? Perhaps it had always been like this. In the city, in London and then in Rome, with both of them working, it hadn’t seemed to matter. Every few days they would have a row about some trivial thing, a TV programme, the cat litter, a misplaced sock. And then, a little less convincingly each time, it seemed to Gordon, they would make up.

  Cees cal
led the following week, when Gordon had almost forgotten. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said twice, ‘who did you say you were?’ before remembering. ‘Oh yes, of course, er, Case? Hello.’

  ‘I’m Cathy’s friend,’ Cees said. ‘She spoke to you.’

  ‘I know, I know who you are now,’ said Gordon hurriedly. ‘You’re looking for a house round here.’

  ‘I want a beautiful house in your part of Italy. Not Tuscany,’ Cees said. ‘I don’t want Tuscany.’

  ‘Well, this isn’t Tuscany.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ said Cees. He had an accent Gordon supposed was Dutch English, with mid-Atlantic undertones. Before he could say anything else, Cees continued: ‘Hey, find me a monastery!’

  ‘I’m not sure I can do that,’ said Gordon. When Omar walked past with an empty glass in his hand he grabbed his arm, and pointed to the phone. It’s him, he mouthed, the man about the house. Omar looked puzzled, then keen. He nodded. Say yes, he mouthed back. Just say yes.

  ‘You think you can find me something authentic?’

  ‘Authentic? Oh yes, I can do authentic,’ said Gordon, his own voice moving up a notch to suit the slightly fevered tone of the conversation. ‘Authentic monastery, maybe not.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Monastery. Mill. Castle. Manor house. Hey, man, I don’t want modern.’

  ‘I think I’m beginning to see what you’re looking for,’ said Gordon. ‘Something unspoilt, off the tourist trail. A piece of the real Italy.’

  ‘We’re totally on the same page. I knew it! Hey, look, this is it, right now. I’m coming over. Can you book me in somewhere?’

  ‘You can stay with us,’ said Gordon, grimacing in mockhorror at Omar, who grimaced back, then shrugged.

  ‘Cool! I’m on my way. I’ll text you the flight details.’

  ‘All right,’ said Gordon, but the line had gone dead. ‘He’s a madman,’ he said, but Omar had already refilled his glass and gone back to his study, where he was working on a website for some American journalist who was coming to the end of a stint living in Rome to be near the Vatican. Omar’s Italian side came through at times like this, the one hand washes another side. He would do it for nothing and then Gordon would somehow be to blame for the next bill to arrive on the doormat.

  Gordon felt cold suddenly. Had the temperature dropped, or was it him? They would have to make sure the house was warm for when Cees arrived. And they would need to talk about money. They would need, as always, to talk about money.

  Cees arrived with his girlfriend, Jenny.

  ‘It’s short for Geneviève,’ he told them. ‘She’s French.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘My mother was. He just likes to think I am.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Cees. They were standing in the hall of Gordon and Omar’s house. Cees looked up at the ceiling. ‘This is very nice,’ he said. ‘What do you call this?’

  ‘Vaulted,’ said Omar. Gordon glanced at him sharply. My, he thought, you’re taken, aren’t you? Cees was a little taller than either of them, and at least fifteen years younger. He had an early-career Clint Eastwood look about him. Jenny was pale, dark blonde, visibly undernourished. She stood beside him, her eyes on the door behind her as if plotting her escape. They both had cabin luggage, which was a relief. Gordon hadn’t managed to extract a departure date from the flurry of text messages and emails he’d received, and replied to, in the preceding week. The two small matching expensive cases looked like a weekend job at the most. Cees was already halfway up the stairs, flicking at the banisters with a fingernail.

  ‘Is this normal?’ he said. He looked unhappy.

  ‘Normal?’

  ‘This – I don’t know – roughness?’ It wasn’t clear if his tone was questioning the word itself or the state of the paint, Gordon’s work earlier that year, in the first shock of unemployment.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Omar. ‘It’s characteristic of paintwork in this part of Italy.’ He looked at Gordon briefly. He’d told him to sandpaper the ironwork first, but been ignored, or obeyed half-heartedly. This look of weary dissatisfaction, thought Gordon, was his punishment.

  The following morning they went to see the house. Omar drove, although it was clear that Cees preferred to be in the driver’s seat. They were followed, in his battered Panda, by Gino, otherwise known as Flea, a local wheeler-dealer who claimed to have identified the owners. They’ll be there, he’d promised, but Gordon had told him to back off. They might not even like the place, he said, although he’d known they would. Over dinner, Cees had told them what he wanted and Gordon had mentally ticked each feature off. Stone. Tick. Nature. Tick. Fireplace. Tick. Jenny, who was otherwise silent, wanted to know how far away it was from Rome, but Cees had slapped her down. They weren’t here for Rome. Gordon had made them pasta alla gricia, followed by buffalo mozzarella and a spicy local sausage, wine from the only decent vineyard within a fifty-mile radius, salad, bread baked in a wood oven, fruit. ‘This is what we’re here for,’ Cees kept saying, waving his laden fork in the air. ‘Where did you source this oil?’ he said. Neither of them dared say it was bought from the local supermarket and contained the industrially extracted oil of olives from more than one member of the European Community. ‘This little man,’ said Omar, shamelessly. ‘We’ll have to introduce you to him.’ But Cees shook his head. ‘Not cold-pressed,’ he said. ‘You can taste the difference.’ Which put them both in their place.

  As soon as the car came to a halt, Cees was out of it and bounding up the hill. ‘There’s a track,’ Gordon called out, but Cees was already at the top of the slope and waving down. Gordon turned to Jenny. ‘He’s full of energy, isn’t he? Is he always this energetic?’

  ‘He’s driven,’ she said, in what might have been admiration. ‘He frightens me sometimes.’

  Flea was fiddling around with papers in the back of the Panda, his skinny rump sticking out.

  ‘What’s he for?’ said Jenny.

  ‘He sorts stuff out,’ said Gordon. ‘The paperwork.’

  ‘I expect there’ll be a lot of that,’ she said. She shivered. ‘I thought it’d be a bit warmer than this.’

  ‘We have winters in Italy too,’ Gordon said. Omar had hurried ahead. ‘They just don’t last as long.’

  ‘Have you talked about money yet?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He likes everything to be clear at the outset. It’s the Dutch in him.’

  ‘I thought he was all Dutch?’

  She grinned. ‘He is.’ To his surprise, she slipped her arm through his. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  The track they were on curved round the slope of the hill in a ragged loop. At the furthest point from the house was an open-sided barn filled with hay and, behind that, a modern building, the ground floor apparently inhabited, the first floor a tangle of concrete and wires. ‘Cees won’t like that,’ she said. ‘It’s really ugly. He hates that kind of thing.’ Well, yes, thought Gordon, people do. They were halfway to the house, with Omar and Cees already behind it, when Flea overtook them. Gordon was about to ask him about the building when Flea paused to show them a bunch of keys.

  ‘Are those for the house?’ Gordon asked him, in Italian. But Flea was already at the nearest door, pushing and pulling at the handle with all the force he could find.

  They’d found Flea sitting at their table in the local bar some months before. He was small and twitchy, with a straggly moustache and gelled-back hair, shockingly unattractive. He was holding one of those large leather-bound diaries Italian banks tend to give to their more trusted clients at Christmas. This one was six years old, bulging with papers, the flapping ends of unpaid bills, flyers. When they came back to the table with croissants, he stood up to leave, then sat down again, as though the effort to move had suddenly exhausted him. He gave them his hand, introduced himself as Gino, apologised for interrupting their breakfast in a language that was barely recognisable as English. Omar replied in Italian that he hadn’t interrupted anything, not y
et anyway. Gordon, as always, was shocked by the ease of Omar’s impoliteness, but Gino didn’t seem to mind. He started to talk about the property market in the area. You must have friends, he said, who are looking to move here, so near the sea, the mountains – this with a wave of his cigarette towards the modest hill behind the town – the unpolluted air. You must have friends who would need the help of an insider, a man with qualifications, familiar with currency options, experienced in international finance. This speech was accompanied by a flurry of supporting material, a diploma of some sort, the diary itself, with the name of the local bank embossed in gold on its front. Omar nodded, his boredom increasingly obvious. When it was clear, to Gordon at least, that he was about to snap, Gino stood up, pushed a card into Gordon’s hand, not Omar’s, and darted into the bar, emerging moments later with a harassed expression on his face. They found out later that he had paid their breakfast bill, by which point Omar had taken the card from Gordon and put it in his wallet. This was before Gordon lost his job; Gordon would have thrown the card away, but Omar had always been more far-sighted.

  It was Omar who called him Flea. ‘I’ve noticed him before, jumping around the place. And did you see how he fidgeted in his seat all the time, as though he was looking for some nice tasty bit of bare flesh to sink his whatsit into?’ he said when Gino had gone. ‘I wanted to reach over and squidge him between my thumb and finger.’ After that morning, if one of them scratched his neck in the street, the other would know that Flea had been sighted somewhere close by, and they would dive into the nearest shop.

  One of the larger keys turned in the lock. By this time Omar and Cees had circled the house and were back at the nowopened door as Flea pushed it hard against the wall behind it with a flourish. Flakes of plaster fell. Gordon, ever cautious, glanced around to see if anyone had heard. The nearest visible building was a modern two-storeyed house on the other side of the valley, in similar style to the one they had passed on the track, but completed. He thought he saw a movement beneath the portico. Were they breaking the law? Almost certainly, he thought, although Omar would plead force majeure, which was his version of innocence. Cees was already in the room and halfway up the stairs in the corner before Gordon turned his gaze back to the house. Jenny had followed her boyfriend in and was telling him to be careful, the stairs didn’t look safe. Omar was standing beside the door, grinning like a madman. ‘He likes it,’ he said in a loudish whisper. Flea rubbed his hands together, then blew into them. Gordon turned up his collar against the icy wind that had blown up from nowhere. What now? he wondered. He felt as if he was in a film, probably French, about people misunderstanding one another’s needs.