Sorcerer Page 10

  SORCERER TEN

  Jocelyn Holmes had been to see her nephew Ed Lake in hospital. Being reunited with him had done them both the world of good and it had set her mind racing. Her old friend Jack White had been associated with George and Mary Griffin all those years ago and now she wanted to know just how far that association had gone. She decided not to put her case over the phone and instead she drove over to Jack’s house to talk to him directly.

  ‘Hello, darling’ he greeted her with a hug and a kiss. ‘You might’ve known I’d just put a pot of coffee on. Fancy some?’

  ‘You bet’ said Jocelyn as she followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Unless you fancy a drop of something else?’

  ‘It’s not even eleven o’clock’

  ‘It’s never stopped you before. Remember when we were in Barbados? We’d hardly finished breakfast before you were on the rum punches. I don’t think you were properly sober for a week’.

  Jocelyn laughed. ‘It was only a few months after Brian died and you whisked me away for a good time because you were worried about me. You saved my life then, Jack. You were the good friend I needed and the good friend you’ve always been’.

  ‘Ooh’ said Jack as he poured two cups of coffee and handed one to her. ‘That sounds like the kind of reflective voice that’s leading up to something?’

  ‘You know why I’m here, Jack’.

  Jack paused and looked at her. ‘I’ve been dreading this’.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ever since you told me about Ed. Ever since I found out that Griffin was back. Ever since they found those bodies in Pembroke House I knew the moment would come when I had to look you in the eye and tell you the truth, because you and Doreen are the only two people in the world I cannot lie to’.

  Jocelyn sat down at Jack’s kitchen table. Jack then sat down opposite her and felt like a dark shadow had been cast over his soul.

  ‘I didn’t get to know you until after Mary Griffin broke off all contact with me and the rest of my family’ said Jocelyn. ‘But you knew them all the way through that period. So what happened, Jack? I need to know’.

  ‘I never liked George’ Jack began. ‘I always thought there was something creepy about him. But it was expedient to be friends with him. He was very influential back then. He knew all the right people and if you were a friend of his it meant you were invited to all the places with all the people you needed to know. It was as simple as that. I didn’t become friends with him because I liked him. I became friends with him because it was necessary for my own progression in life’.

  ‘He sexually abused my nephew for years’.

  ‘Yes’ said Jack, rubbing his chin. ‘I knew about that’.

  Jocelyn was astonished. ‘You knew? Well now this had better be bloody good!’

  ‘I wanted Mary Griffin’s shares in the family firm Valley engineering’.

  ‘They weren’t Mary Griffin’s shares’ said Jocelyn, testily. ‘They belonged to my nephew. It was his father’s company. Mary married into it’.

  ‘I know’ said Jack. ‘I know. But they were all that was stopping me from gaining control of the company. But I didn’t have enough capital to buy them. So I approached George and he agreed to speak to Mary about selling the shares to me. I knew it would be a done deal but still Mary came up with a price that was too much for me. That’s when George said he would lend me the difference between what Mary wanted and what I had. It wasn’t much. Just a few thousand but it clinched the deal’.

  ‘But you knew that Griffin had persuaded his wife to sell her son’s future’

  ‘Yes, I did know that’.

  ‘And you still went ahead with it?’

  ‘I wanted the shares Jocelyn. I wanted the company’.

  ‘And you were prepared to stop at nothing?’

  ‘Yes is the short answer to that’.

  ‘But you were friends with Ed?’

  ‘Yes’ said Jack. ‘He’d taken me into his confidence about just what George did to him. He befriended me and used me as a shoulder’.

  ‘And yet you … you still stabbed him in the back?’

  ‘Mary Griffin used the fact that I was gay against me’.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She threatened to withdraw her offer to sell me the shares in Valley engineering if I didn’t end my friendship with Ed. She also said she would report me to the police because at that time Ed was under the age of consent and she would tell them that I’d been having a sexual relationship with him. When I retaliated and told her that it wasn’t me who needed reporting for having had sexual relations with her son she said the evidence would all be there and she’d make all of it stick to me. She used my friendship with her son not only to blackmail me but also to protect her paedophile husband’.

  ‘So she did know that Griffin was abusing Ed’

  ‘Oh she knew alright’ said Jack. ‘And in me she saw an opportunity to get Griffin off the hook. There’d have been a huge scandal and everybody, including the police, would’ve believed them and not me. I’d have probably ended up losing everything and that was a place I just couldn’t go back to, Jocelyn, not for anybody. So I did end my friendship with Ed’.

  ‘And you walked away with control of the company as your consolation whilst Ed was still at Griffin’s mercy’ said Jocelyn.

  ‘Don’t put it like that, Jocelyn’.

  ‘Why not when it’s the truth? Look, I can see the predicament you were in, Jack, but surely you could’ve told someone?’

  ‘If it makes it any easier, Jocelyn, I’ve always regretted giving in the way I did’.

  ‘Yes, because here you are sitting here with more money than you’ll ever need and there’s Ed in a psychiatric unit’.

  ‘I know’ said Jack. ‘I’m not proud, Jocelyn. But everything comes with a price’.

  ‘And Ed paid yours for you’.

  ‘Okay’ said Jack. ‘I’ll accept that as fair comment’.

  ‘And did you ever have sexual relations with Ed?’

  ‘No, absolutely, categorically and positively no’ Jack affirmed. ‘I really was just a friend but Mary wanted to find someone to provide a diversion from facing up to the fact that her husband had sexually abused her son. My sexuality and my closeness with Ed put me right in the firing line’.

  ‘It’s a good job that bitch Mary is dead because if she wasn’t I’d kill her myself’.

  ‘She wasn’t worth doing time for, Jocelyn’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, as you know, back then it was very different for men like me, especially when we were in business. Anybody and everybody is coming out now but back then I would never have been accepted in the business community. I was vulnerable to the likes of Mary Griffin. She was no innocent. She did nothing to stop George’s abuse of Ed. She had control of his shares until Ed was twenty-one but because George didn’t want him to inherit what was rightfully his, he persuaded Mary to sell the shares whilst they were still under her control. That way the money would all be theirs and Ed would never see a penny’.

  ‘Why did he hate Ed so much?’

  ‘I think he saw him as an unnecessary inconvenience. That’s why he did what he did to Ed. He wanted to crush his will to stand up to him’.

  ‘Well as far as you’re concerned, nobody can touch you now, Jack’.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they can’.

  ‘So you won’t mind going down to the police station and putting everything you’ve just told me in an official statement?’

  Jack held his hands up. ‘Hey, Jocelyn, steady on. Confessing all to you is one thing. Confessing to the police is quite another’.

  ‘I don’t see why’ said Jocelyn. ‘It’s about getting justice for Ed, the friend you stabbed in the back’.

  ‘But Jocelyn … ‘

  ‘ … no buts about this, Jack’ said Jocelyn who fixed Jack with determined eyes. ‘I’m not giving you any choice in this. You will go to the police and you will make that statement. If I have to drag you down
there myself, you will do it’.

  Gabby drove to the hospital for her daily visit to see her Dad and got there a few minutes early. It was difficult to think of her Dad in a place like this. The psychiatric unit itself was behind a locked door and all visitors had to be swiped in by one of the nurses. She’d seen some pretty desperate cases in there of people with eyes devoid of all love and compassion and others who didn’t have anybody to come and see if they were getting better. It wasn’t the most uplifting of places but then it couldn’t be because of its very nature.

  ‘You look well, Dad’ said Gabby as she sat down beside her father in the lounge area of the unit. ‘The medication must be working’.

  ‘They’re filling me full of something’ said Ed.

  ‘Well it must be working’ said Gabby.

  ‘When am I going home, Gabby?’

  ‘Dad, Aunt Jocelyn wants you to go and stay with her when they let you out’ said Gabby who didn’t want to tell him yet that the mortgage company were repossessing his house and wouldn’t relent because he was in hospital. ‘She wants to take care of you until you get fully back on your feet’.

  ‘That’s very nice of her’ said Ed. ‘It’s been good to see Aunt Jocelyn’.

  ‘Well I’m sorry it took something like this but I’m glad she’s back in our lives now. But why didn’t you ever talk to me about her?’

  ‘There didn’t seem much point’ said Ed. ‘We weren’t in touch. I suppose I could’ve tried to patch things up but I just didn’t. It happens like that in families sometimes’

  ‘You didn’t cause the rift though, Dad’.

  ‘No’ said Ed. He was feeling tired. ‘No, I didn’t and nor did she’.

  ‘Dad, we’re going to get him. We’re going to get that evil pervert’.

  ‘You’re so strong, Gabby’ said Ed, proudly. ‘You must take after your mother in that respect’.

  ‘You had all your strength ripped out of you’ said Gabby. ‘You’ve got to remember that’.

  ‘Listen, how’s it all going with the wedding?’

  ‘It’s all going fine, Dad’ said Gabby, smiling broadly. ‘Just a couple of weeks to go before you walk me down the aisle’.

  ‘Are you sure you still want me to?’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t blame you, Gabby, if you wanted someone else’.

  ‘Now Dad, I really will hear no more about this’ Gabby insisted. ‘Okay? You’re my Dad and I’ll be proud to have you walk me down the aisle’.

  ‘But what will they all say? They’ll all know what’s been going on’.

  ‘If they think badly of you, Dad, then they’re no friend of mine’.

  ‘It’s a shame our Anne can’t make it’.

  ‘Anne? Who’s Anne?’

  Ed felt a lurch in his soul. He’d spent twenty years putting his step-sister out of his mind, heart, and soul but now there she was bursting out of his consciousness for no apparent reason.

  ‘Dad? Who is she? Could she help us in any way?’

  ‘Help us?’

  ‘In the case against Griffin’ said Gabby who was getting nervous. Her father looked pained and anguished all of a sudden.

  ‘I should’ve kept my mouth shut’ said Ed. ‘I let her down when she needed me. Forget I even mentioned the name, Gabby’.

  Jack White was lying in bed with big Mick. They were side by side on their stomachs and Jack was gently running his hand across Mick’s back. He loved being this close to him, smelling him, feeling his breath.

  ‘You really went for it tonight, Jack’ said Mick.

  ‘Yes, I thought I was going to pass out at one stage’.

  ‘No fear’ said Mick. ‘You’d give any younger bloke a run for his money’.

  ‘I’ve had a lot on my mind’ said Jack who wasn’t kidding. He’d been feeling uneasy for some days now. ‘It gave me a lot of tension to release’.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Depends what it is’.

  ‘Well, somebody with your background and life experience’ said Mick. ‘What do you see in a painter and decorator with a wife and four kids?’

  Jack smiled and turned onto his back. He brought his hand up and gently stroked the side of Mick’s stubble covered face with the back of his fingers. ‘Oh Mick, Mick, dear, dear Mick. You don’t ask easy questions, my friend’.

  ‘Sorry, should I not have asked that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that’.

  ‘It’s just that … well I mean, you’ve run a company, been all round the world. I’m just a bloke who came out of school with no qualifications and ended up in a trade where I don’t exactly get chosen for my number of brain cells’.

  ‘Don’t do yourself down, Mick. I grew up on the great council estate of Wythenshawe’.

  ‘Get away?’ said Mick as he turned to Jack and hoisted himself up on his elbow.

  ‘No, I did. But by a combination of luck and the right decisions I managed to get out of it’.

  ‘And climb a very long way’.

  ‘And climb a very long way, yes but even though I’ve got money I haven’t got what’s really needed to sustain a person through life’. He paused whilst he looked into Mick’s dark blue eyes. His dark hair was all ruffled after sex and it was just perfect. ‘I was in lust the moment you came into my house. I saw my chance and I went for it. When you get to my age the clock is ticking and you can’t afford the luxury of hesitation. You’re a bloke, Mick, and you make me feel horny with your bloke ways and your bloke talk and if things had been different I wish we could’ve had more than just this sexual fling’.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘If you asked all the gay men in the world most of them would say they wanted a bloke like you, a real man’s man’.

  ‘So do you think other gays fancy me?’

  ‘I’d say it was guaranteed that they do’.

  ‘Well you learn something new every day’ said Mick, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

  ‘That’s made your day’.

  ‘I have to be honest’.

  ‘But don’t get me wrong, Mick. I’m not breaking my heart over you all day long’.

  ‘I’m not that big headed, Jack’.

  ‘But the truth is that you do give me a glimpse of what life could’ve been like if I’d met the right one’.

  ‘Jack, I’m really flattered to hear you say that’.

  ‘Well it’s your turn now’ said Jack who felt like he’d said more than enough. ‘What makes you want to be here with me?’

  ‘I like sex’ said Mick. ‘When you offered me the massage that day I knew where it would lead and I thought why not? Give it a try. What’s there to lose? I’m glad I did now’.

  ‘What about your mates down the pub? Do you think they’d approve?’

  ‘I don’t know because I never thought that I would’ said Mick. ‘But I’m not going to risk it by asking any of them’.

  ‘How are things at home at the moment?’

  Mick pulled a face. ‘The usual’.

  Jack laughed. ‘Your wife doesn’t understand you’.

  ‘Too right she doesn’t’ said Mick. ‘Her Mum told her that when she’s pregnant she mustn’t have sex. So with each of our four I’ve gone without for a good nine or ten months but when she was expecting one of them I asked her one morning in bed, when I’d got a monster of a hard-on, if she’d wank me off. She slapped me across the face and told me I was everything that was dirty and wrong. She always slaps me when she’s in a mood about something’.

  ‘But if you’d slapped her it would’ve been called domestic violence and you’d have been condemned from every rooftop’ said Jack.

  ‘I know’ said Mick. ‘But that’s how it works in working class families like mine. Volatile, highly strung women and men who have to do as they’re told and put up with being slapped when she feels like it. I wanted something that was just for me, Jack. Is that so wrong? She’s got the house that she rules the roost in and she hangs out wi
th all the other wives who tell each other they have to do everything because all men are useless. It never crosses their mind how it feels for the men to hear that crap day after day but if any of us were to retaliate or stand up for ourselves we’d be painted as totally in the wrong. Being here with you makes me feel so different. I needed something and what I didn’t know was that it would turn out to be you’.

  ‘Life is full of surprises. What other options could you have gone for?’

  ‘Well I could’ve gone to a prostitute, a female one, but I just don’t have the spare cash for it. I could’ve maybe found some girl, had an affair, but I know what would’ve happened. She’d have got pregnant and all Hell would’ve broken loose’.

  ‘Why are these girls all so obsessed with making babies?’

  ‘God knows’.

  ‘It’s as if they think that it’s the only way to define themselves as women’.

  ‘Pushing a pram in a shell suit and looking fifty when they’re only nineteen. I’ve seen it all round where I live, Jack. I’ve got two girls of my own and I want to steer them away from all that. But how am I going to do that when their mother is virtually knitting baby clothes as soon as they have their first menstrual?’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘Pauline just wants it all to carry on. She wants our girls to be as domineering as she is and our boys to be saps who’ll spend their lives under some girl’s control. You know, I was really touched by that little girl in Pakistan who was on the news recently. She’d been shot by the Taliban for demanding her right to an education and there’s my wife who’s quite happy to watch our daughters throw their chance of an education away because she doesn’t think it’s important for what she calls families like us’.

  ‘You are joking?’

  ‘I wish I was’.

  ‘Well you’re their father’ said Jack. ‘Don’t you get a say?’

  ‘To put it bluntly, no’ Mick admitted. ‘Believe me I’ve tried to get all my kids interested in education but Pauline shoots me down every time. She says there’s no point in our kids getting an education because there’ll have jobs not careers. But I want something different for my kids, Jack. I want them to have bigger dreams than me. I want them to go out and see the world, to grab life and get as much out of it as they can. I want them to have lots of sex of whatever kind they choose between consenting adults and not even think about having babies until they’re at least in their thirties. My eldest daughter, Tina, she’s a really bright kid, all her teachers have told her that, but she won’t apply herself to learning and Pauline says that’s alright. She says it doesn’t matter what kind of job she gets as long as it pays a wage that she’ll put towards the treadmill she’ll be getting on with her boyfriend when she tells him she’s pregnant’.