The Price of Love and Other Stories Read online

  The Price of Love and Other Stories

  Peter Robinson

  For Sheila

  Contents

  Introduction

  Going Back

  Cornelius Jubb

  The Magic of Your Touch

  The Eastvale Ladies’ Poker Circle

  The Ferryman’s Beautiful Daughter

  Walking the Dog

  Blue Christmas

  Shadows on the Water

  The Cherub Affair

  The Price of Love

  Birthday Dance

  Like a Virgin

  Afternotes

  About the Author

  Books by Peter Robinson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  For someone who considers himself primarily a novelist, I seem to have written rather a lot of short stories. I have also been very fortunate in that my publishers want to publish them in collection form, which induces a retrospective frame of mind in me as I gather these tales together and prepare them for publication.

  Most of the stories in this collection were written at the request of one editor or another. I know that sounds rather mercenary, and that, in the Romantic view of art, the writer is supposed to work from pure inspiration. But I think of the stories as challenges, and sometimes a challenge can bring out the best in a person, or at least it can bring to the surface something he didn’t know he had, something he hadn’t explored before. And that is very much the case in this collection.

  I’m not going to go into details here about the content or origins of any of these stories. I’m saving that for the afternotes because I don’t want to spoil anything for those readers who, like me, want to know as little as possible about a story or novel they are about to read. I will say, though, that some of these requests for stories opened up new directions for me, took me places I would not normally have gone, and forced me to dig deep into areas where I might never have ventured left to my own devices.

  In some cases, I simply set off into the dark without even a light to guide my way, moving from one word to the next and letting the story find itself. In others, I thought and fretted about the story for months, shaped it in my mind, despaired over it, scrapped it, started again, and when I was finally driven by the demands of a deadline to put fingers to keyboard, it came out as something different, often something better than I could ever have hoped for.

  I have said before that I find short stories difficult to write, and that is still the case. The discipline is exacting and the amount of space in which I sometimes feel I have to maneuver feels quite claustrophobic. The bits I have to leave out would probably make a novel. But the satisfaction level is high. I remember when I used to write mostly poetry, I would sometimes work for weeks trying to get a poem right, especially when I began to value form and structure as much as, if not more than, Romantic self-expression or postmodernist confessional. Everyone who has ever written a poem knows that to make it work you sometimes have to sacrifice your best line or image, and working on a short story is far more akin to that process than is writing a novel, which in some ways is a constant search for more things to put in.

  So here are the stories. I hope you enjoy them. People often ask me whether they should start with the first Inspector Banks novel or with one of the later ones, and I usually answer that it doesn’t matter unless you are the kind of person who has to start at the beginning. The stories are not presented chronologically, and nor did I agonize over their order according to some secret code or system of symbolism known only to me. Please feel free to jump in wherever you wish.

  PETER ROBINSON

  Toronto, January 2009

  Going Back

  An Inspector Banks Novella

  I

  Banks pulled up outside his parents’ council house and parked his Renault by the side of the road. He wondered if it would be safe left out overnight. The estate had a bad reputation, even when he grew up there in the sixties, and it had only gotten worse over recent years. Not that there was any alternative, he realized, as he made sure it was locked and the security system was working; his parents didn’t own a garage.

  He couldn’t very well remove the CD player for the weekend, but to be on the safe side, he stuffed the CDs themselves into his overnight bag. He didn’t think any young joyriders would want to steal Thelonious Monk, Cecilia Bartoli or the Grateful Dead, but you couldn’t be too careful. Besides, he had a portable disc player now, and he liked to listen to music in bed as he drifted off to sleep.

  Banks’s parents’ house stood near the western edge of the estate, close to the arterial road, across from an abandoned factory and a row of shops. Banks paused for a moment and took in the redbrick terrace houses—rows of five, each with a little garden, low wall and privet hedge. His family had moved here from the tiny, grim back-to-back when he was twelve, when the houses were new.

  It was a Friday afternoon near the end of October, and Banks was home for the weekend for his parents’ golden wedding anniversary that Sunday, only his second overnight stay since he had left home at the age of eighteen to study business at London Polytechnic. When that didn’t work out, and when the sixties lost their allure in the early seventies, he joined the police. Since then long hours, hard work, and his parents’ overt disapproval of his career choice had kept him away. Visiting home was always a bit of a trial, but they were his mother and father, Banks reminded himself; he owed them more than he could ever repay, he had certainly neglected them over the years and he knew they loved him in their way. They weren’t getting any younger, either.

  He took a deep breath, opened the gate, walked up the path and knocked at the scratched red door, a little surprised by the loud music coming from the next house. He saw his mother approach through the frosted glass pane. She opened the door, rubbed her hands together as if drying them and said, “Alan, lovely to see you. Come on in, love, come in.”

  Banks dropped his overnight bag in the hall and followed his mother through to the living room. It stretched from the front of the house to the back, and the back area, next to the kitchen, was permanently laid out as a dining room. The wallpaper was a wispy brown autumn-leaves pattern, the three-piece suite a matching brown velveteen and a sentimental autumn landscape hung over the electric fire.

  His father was sitting in his usual armchair, the one with the best straight-on view of the television. He didn’t get up, just grunted, “Son, nice of you to come.”

  “Hello, Dad. How are you doing?”

  “Mustn’t complain.” Arthur Banks had been suffering from mild angina for years, ever since he’d been made redundant from the sheet-metal factory, and it seemed to get neither better nor worse as the years went on. He took pills for the pain and didn’t even need an inhaler. Other than that, and the damage booze and fags had wreaked on his liver and lungs over the years, he had always been fit as a fiddle. Hollow chested and skinny, he still sported a head of thick dark hair with hardly a trace of gray. He wore it slicked back with lashings of Brylcreem.

  Banks’s mother, Ida, plump and nervy, fussed a little more about how thin Banks was looking, then the kitchen door opened and a stranger walked into the room.

  “Kettle’s on, Mrs. B. Now, who have we got here? Let me guess.”

  “This is our son, Geoff. We told you he was coming. For the party, like.”

  “So this is the lad who’s done so well for himself, is it? The Porsche and the mews house in South Kensington?”

  “No, that’s the other one, Roy. He’s not coming till Sunday afternoon. He’s got important business. No, this is our eldest: Alan. I’m sure I told you
about him. The one in that picture.”

  The photograph she pointed to, half-hidden by a pile of women’s magazines on one of the cabinet shelves, showed Banks at age sixteen, when he captained the school rugby team for a season. There he stood in his purple and yellow strip, holding the ball, looking proud. It was the only photograph of him they had ever put on display.

  “This is Geoff Salisbury,” said Ida Banks. “Geoff lives up the street at number fifty-five.”

  Geoff moved forward, hand stretched out like a weapon. He was a small, compact man, with lively, slightly watery eyes and cropped gray hair, about Banks’s age. His smile revealed what looked to Banks like a set of perfect false teeth. His handshake was firm, and his hands were calloused and ingrained with oil or grease from manual labor.

  “Pleased to meet you, Alan,” he said. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I can’t just now.” He turned to Banks’s mother. “Have you got that shopping list, Mrs. B? I’ll be off to Asda now.”

  “Only if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

  “Nothing’s too much trouble for you. You know that. Besides, I have to go there myself.”

  Banks’s mother picked up her handbag, took out her purse and gave Geoffrey a handwritten list and a twenty-pound note. “Will that cover it?”

  “Easily, Mrs. B. Easily. I’ll be back in a tick. Coach and Horses tonight, Arthur?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see how I feel,” said Banks’s father. On closer examination, he did look tired and drawn, Banks thought. More so since he had last seen him in the summer. His eyes had the look of milky marbles and his skin was the color of porridge. It could be the strain of the preparing for the upcoming party—Arthur Banks, while gregarious enough in the pub, had never liked a house full of relatives—but most of the organization, Banks guessed, would have fallen to his mother. Perhaps it was simple old age catching up fast.

  Geoff Salisbury left, and Banks saw him go up to the red Fiesta with the rusted chassis, parked behind Banks’s Renault. Geoff paused and looked Banks’s car over before getting into his own and driving off.

  “Who’s that?” Banks asked his mother.

  “I told you. Geoff Salisbury. He’s a neighbor.”

  “He seems at home here.”

  “I don’t know what we’d do without him,” said Mrs. Banks. “He’s just like a son to us. Anyway, son, sit yourself down. Have a cuppa.”

  Banks sat and his mother poured. “So Roy’s not coming till Sunday, then?” he said.

  “No. He rang us last night, didn’t he, Arthur?” She said it as if it were some momentous event. Arthur Banks nodded. “He’s got an important business meeting all day Saturday,” she went on. “Something to do with some Yanks flying in, and they have to be back in New York by evening…I don’t know. Anyway, he says he should be here by Sunday lunchtime.”

  “Good of him to bother,” Banks muttered.

  His mother cast him a long-suffering glance. Banks knew she had been used to the brothers’ bickering when they both lived at home, and it was no surprise whose side she usually took. “What time are you planning on starting the party?” Banks asked.

  “We told everyone to come about six o’clock. That’ll give us time to clear up and get things ready after lunch. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet, but Mrs. Summerville passed away just last week.” She announced it in the sort of soft and solemn tones generally reserved for those who had passed away.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” said Banks. Mrs. Summerville was the mother of the first girl he had ever slept with, though he had always believed that neither the late Mrs. Summerville nor his own mother knew that. “What did she die of?”

  “It wasn’t anything suspicious, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  His mother studied him, frowning. “Yes…well, it was a blessing really. She’d been very poorly. Died in her sleep, according to Alice Green.”

  “Still…” said Banks, uncertain what to say. He sipped some tea. As usual, it was milky and sweet, though he had stopped taking milk and sugar twenty years ago.

  “And how are the Marshalls?” Banks asked. The Marshalls were the parents of Banks’s school friend Graham, who had disappeared at the age of fourteen and whose body had been discovered the previous summer. Banks had come down to help the locals work on the case and the solution hadn’t pleased anyone. It was during that time Banks had met Detective Inspector Michelle Hart, whom he had been seeing on and off ever since. Pity she wasn’t around this weekend, he thought.

  “Same as ever, I suppose,” said Mrs. Banks. “We don’t see much of them, do we, Arthur?”

  Arthur Banks shook his head.

  “It’s as if they’ve shut themselves away since you were last down.” Banks’s mother cast him an accusing glance, as if their becoming recluses were his fault. And maybe it was, in a way. The truth is rarely as liberating as people would have us believe; it often binds more than it frees.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

  “You know,” his mother went on, “while you’re here, you ought to go and see Mrs. Green. She keeps asking about you, you know, and she was very put out you didn’t drop by and see her in the summer. She still thinks very fondly of you, though I can’t see why, the noise you lot used to make at her house.”

  Banks smiled. He remembered Mrs. Green fondly, too. She was the mother of an old school friend, Tony Green, whom Banks hadn’t seen since he left home. Tony hadn’t been one of the real in-crowd, but he had been on the rugby team with Banks, and Banks had always liked Mrs. Green. Most of the kids did. She didn’t stop them from smoking in her house, and she didn’t mind them playing the sort of music—the Beatles and the Rolling Stones mostly—that most adults hated. Once or twice, she had given Banks and Tony half a crown apiece and sent them off to the pictures out of her way. She had also been very pretty, with the kind of bosom young boys dream about, and she certainly had a mouth on her. Mrs. Green had a reputation for speaking her mind, and nobody ruffled her feathers and got away with it. Tony had gone off to Canada, Banks remembered. Also, Mr. Green had died of emphysema a year or two ago. His mother had told him over the telephone, and he had sent a sympathy card. Yes, he would pay Mrs. Green a visit.

  II

  So Banks sipped tea with his mother and father, catching up on the local gossip. The usual stuff: another school friend had emigrated to Australia, an old neighbor who had moved into a home a year ago had died, and the Venables lad from number sixty-six had been sent to Borstal for mugging a pensioner. Banks didn’t bother telling his mother that it wasn’t called “Borstal” anymore but “detention center” or “youth custody center.” They weren’t much interested in what he’d been doing, outside of the divorce from Sandra. They were more interested in Brian and Tracy, and they expressed regret that neither could come to the party on Sunday: Brian’s band was playing an important series of gigs in Germany, and Tracy had the flu. Not entirely convinced this wasn’t some excuse, Banks had dropped by and offered to drive her from her university residence in Leeds, but when he saw her, he took pity on her and said he’d look in again on his way back. Fortunately, she had friends there who would feed her chicken noodle soup and Lemsip in the meantime.

  “Have you seen who’s moved in next door?” Mrs. Banks asked.

  “No,” said Banks. “But I heard them.”

  “Not that side. The other. A Paki family, that’s who. I must say, though,” she went on, “they seem really nice. Very quiet, they are, even the kids, aren’t they, Arthur? And polite. Always say good morning and ask how you’re doing. Talk just like us, they do. Makes a change from that lot on the other side.”

  “Who are they?” Banks asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t even know their name. They moved in about two weeks ago. They’re not very friendly neighbors. Don’t know how many of them live there, either. Shifty-looking lot. Comings and goings all hours of the day and night. Noise. And th
e place is a pigsty.”

  It sounded like a drug house. Banks made a mental note to keep his eyes open. If he noticed anything suspicious, he’d get on to the local police.

  Banks’s father picked up the remote control and turned the television on at half-past five, as Banks remembered he did every weekday. “Is that the time?” said Ida Banks. “I’d better get the tea on. Pork chops, peas and chips all right?”

  “Fine,” said Banks, his stomach sinking. As if there was a choice.

  “And a nice bit of steamed pudding and custard for sweet.”

  “I’ll help.” Banks followed her into the kitchen.

  True to his word, Geoff Salisbury came back from Asda with a bag of groceries. He dumped it on the kitchen table and handed Ida Banks two pound coins in change, then they went through to the living room. Banks, peeling potatoes at the time, started to unload the groceries. As he did so, he came across the printed receipt stuck by condensation to the side of a bottle of chilled apple juice.

  The print was a little blurred, but even so he could see that the total came to £16.08, which left a discrepancy of £1.92, between that and the two pounds Geoff had handed his mother. Holding the receipt, Banks went through into the living room.

  “I think you’ve got the change wrong,” he said, holding out the receipt for Geoff to see.

  Banks mother frowned. “Alan! Must you?” Then she turned to Geoff. “I’m so sorry. Our Alan’s in the police and he can’t seem to let us forget it,” she said, with a dismissive sniff.

  “One of the boys in blue, eh?”

  “CID, actually,” said Banks.

  “Ah. All that Sherlock Holmes stuff.”