Accidental Crime - 22

Jarrod

Barely five minutes into his walk to the shops, Jarrod knew he shouldn’t have worn a coat. He had never been keen on the appearance of a bulging wallet in his front jeans pocket and certainly couldn’t emulate his father’s tendency to shove it down the pocket round the back, and so a coat with a suitably-large inside-pocket was a necessity when leaving the house. It surprised him that no-one had yet invented an appropriately manly response to the handbag and he remembered a cold shiver shooting down his spine the day his mother suggested he wore a bum-bag. Seeing twenty French-exchange pupils marching down the street sporting matching bum-bags and ruck-sacks later that day had merely served to reinforce his determination that a coat was the only suitable answer. And yet, today, whether it was the anticipation of plucking Mansfield off the shelf and cradling her in his arms, or simply the England-defying 30° C that had prompted a shortest-shorts contest amongst the middle-aged men of the town, he felt a warmth that mocked his fashion choice more mercilessly than anything Bethany Palmer had managed to muster on that horrible day in 1996 when he had mistakenly worn orange shorts beneath a green TV-shirt on the school’s annual non-uniform day – or, as it came to be known, the ‘guess which kid gets his mum to buy their casual clothes’ day.

The problem that now arose was that he would need to carry his coat, being careful to hold it the right way round so as not to allow the wallet to slip unnoticed to the ground, and this brought unwanted stares of amusement and bemusement from those passing by, clearly wondering why someone who must have seen/heard the weather report deemed it sensible to venture out in a coat, only to realise their blunder and be forced to unnecessarily burden their already sweaty arm. He could almost hear the ‘tuts’ that were offered in sympathetic condemnation, as heads were shaken at his naivety and ignorance. If required, he was sure he could defend his position and the pockets issue would certainly be his starting point, whilst the solitary cloud in the distance provided another, rather more tenuous, layer of reasoning.

Jarrod did enjoy walking but it was fraught with so many potential dangers that defied any claim that it was the safe, albeit slow, alternative to driving. He had, in his many years of experience, been struck by the brutality of society when people were secured behind the metal frame of a car. Once, on his way home from school, a Super Soaker 500 had been unloaded in his direction from the passenger window of a car barely ten yards to his left. Alone on the pavement, he had been a defenceless victim, with nothing to fire back, nothing to offer in return for the free shower he had been so unexpectedly granted. The laughter that trailed into the distance as the car pulled further away reassured him that he had at least helped those in the car to enjoy their afternoon just that little bit more, whilst he had to give them credit for selecting him from all the other people walking by – of which there were none – and providing him with such special treatment. Perhaps they thought he was a member of a rival gang and this was their first warning shot to stay away from their ‘patch’ or wherever it was they roamed? If so, it certainly failed, as he continued to walk, unabashed, down the same patch of pavement every day until he left school, forever armed with an umbrella clutched in his left hand, ready to project a foolproof barrier should the Super Soaker return. If it was odd to wear a coat in the height of mid-summer, it was surely stranger to carry an umbrella on the bluest of days. But, at least, the laughter would be his when the water splashed against his arched defence, deployed at logic-defying speed after hours of careful practice. Apparently it was bad luck to open an umbrella indoors but Jarrod didn’t feel he could take the chance – surely it was worse luck to leave it closed outdoors with Super Soakers on the loose?

The most pressing danger, however, the one that Jarrod especially felt every time he walked this particular path to the shops, came not from those in cars but from those who, like he, had committed themselves to travel on foot, from those who shared his ‘patch’. It was a danger he felt afresh the moment he slung his coat over his arm that morning, as three uniformed men – boys between the age of 11 and 14 – appeared around the corner, rucksacks slung over one shoulder, chewing invisible gum, laughing as their trainered-feet mercilessly kicked pebbles with disinterested aimlessness.

He would be dead within 5 minutes, at best. Perhaps, if he were lucky, he would last another 15, if some saintly Samaritan passed by at exactly the right time, nursing his fatal wounds until the paramedics arrived to declare the inevitable. Either way, with the approaching boys now a mere 5 metres away, his time was surely up and it was not wholly unreasonable to begin quivering like an Autumn leaf about to fall to the earth below before being crushed underfoot, nor was it unacceptable to take a quick glance to the sky above in the hope of spotting the CCTV camera that would at least catch his killers, if not deter them from carrying out their inevitable plan for morning amusement. It was time to identify something on the pavement below that undoubtedly fascinated him and prevented his eyes from making contact with any of the six that would willingly watch him suffer. Perhaps if he pretended to chew as well, it would provide some sort of unspoken bond between them, whilst suggesting that he was occupied in his own little world and that it would be quite an inconvenience for them to seek to enter it. To be fair, explaining why killing him would not be a good idea would not be difficult and he had already ran through the scene a number of times, with varying degrees of successful outcome, so his lines would be well-learned by the time they became necessary. What worried him, what truly worried him, was the possibility that he wouldn’t get a chance to say anything other than a feeble ‘oi’, perhaps a ‘no’, amidst the unintentional ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ as their fists pounded into his stomach. If only he were to be given a few minutes to reason with them, to point out how their actions would ultimately achieve nothing, then perhaps, just perhaps, he could continue on his way to the safety of Mansfield’s world and leave this scene with little more than the unfocussed swearing of teenagers ringing in his ears.

Of course, it was possible that, just like the group of girls from two minutes ago that he was certain were about to rape him in full day-light before leaving him naked and weeping in the hedge, the boys might just walk past and resist their murderous inclinations, leaving him forever wondering when the day might come.

Attracted by the sound of a text message arriving in the middle-boy’s trouser-pocket, their eyes and ears found a new focus and, as Jarrod prepared to pass by, not even a stare was thrown in his direction. Laughter was heard – probably criticising his coat – but no punches had been landed, no kicks had been forthcoming as he strode past, spared from certain death for another day. He had been given another chance, experienced what all of those near-death-experience people had gone through – without the blinding distraction of the customary white light – and it was not to be taken lightly.  In some way, he could see Mansfield’s hand in all this, preserving him for her private invitation into her world. With her in his arms, he could walk the path again without the need for fear. Maybe he could even give the boys a good kicking himself and as for the girls –

He shook the thought out of his head, pleased at its departure, as his lust returned to the book he would soon hold in his hands, his feet bringing him to the door of the shop, the last 500 yards passing by in a blur that he was sure must have existed but could bring no recollection of to the forefront of his mind.

There was a freshness about the shop at 9.01, as yet undefiled by those who would be clamouring for whatever the posters in the window told them they should be buying. He, along with a cardigan and scarf-wearing lady to his right, had arrived with independent conviction, directed by his own will. He should, he realised glancing at his watch, be typing the second set of his 40 words a minute, but here he stood, the wheat-coloured carpet of the store before him, beckoning him in to seek her out, to take her in his arms and to love her, to let her change him inside and out, to engulf him in a world beyond anything he had experienced before.

‘Excuse me,’ the over-dressed lady interrupted with a clear hint of impatience in her tone, ‘are you going to go in or are you just going to stand there all day?’

He was blocking her path, he realised it now. While he stood anticipating the moment, irritating the sales-assistant by keeping the electronic doors from closing, she was trying to squeeze around him on the left, then on the right, before simply giving up and resorting to the old fashioned method of speaking.

‘Thanks,’ she sneered, cranking her neck round to look at him through beady eyes as he side-stepped to allow her through. He would keep an eye on her while they both shared the shop together, intrigued to see what compelled her impatience.

His eyes caught sight of the ‘Classics’ sign ahead and his feet obediently followed. He found himself entranced by her ever-increasing magnetism, carried effortlessly through the wheat-fields to the velvet jacket that lay awaiting his gentle touch.

*

Stepping out of the shop, Jarrod clutched Mansfield close to his chest. It was a suspiciously dry day.

He had felt sorry for poor Katherine as he trawled the shelves, not entirely sure why the store deemed it necessary to stock multiple copies of Moby Dick, as if it were five times greater, five times more worthy, than the slim-line edition of Mansfield’s work. The whale’s presence was unnecessarily intimidating – a perfect symbol of American dominance, he felt – and his removal of the out-flanked Bliss and Other Stories from the shelf was indeed an act of salvation, like a diver plucking pearls from the vast ocean, finding beauty where others would never bother to look.

To Mansfield’s left, Lawrence provided a timely reminder of his overbearing success, as each novel grew in stature, Jarrod’s eyes growing ever wider as he moved from left to right. Lawrence had been a worthy companion but he was looking forward to the smaller courses of Mansfield’s short stories. Tilting Lady Chatterley’s Lover towards him, just to check the cover, he recalled how last month’s family stroll had been cruelly ruined by Lawrence’s intoxicating description. It had been remarkably difficult to explain just why he found it so amusing to watch Jane – his frivolous niece – making a daisy chain. As the erotic associations from a page he had long since tried to dismiss from his overeager memory began to flood through his mind, Jane’s laughter prompted the only possible explanation he could lay his guilty hands on: he found rhyme funny. ‘Jane’ and ‘Chain’ rhyme and therefore he was laughing. It was an impeccable excuse.

The cover-image of Bliss and Other Stories barely offered a glimpse of flesh, as a blue jacket overshadowed any threat the pale pink dress might pose, whilst a black hat provided further reassurance that there would be little trouble with daisies this time around.

As he laid Mansfield down on the counter, he feasted on the momentary impression of intellectual superiority that the shop assistant’s raised eyebrow had afforded him. Jarrod chuckled to himself as he left the shop, picturing the assistant queuing up to buy the latest Johnny Superstar ‘thriller’ – dressed, as the throngs alongside him, in full combat-gear and an umbrella motif drawn in felt-tip on each cheek – whilst he pored over Mansfield’s ponderings with nonchalant ease. He was already looking forward to Dawn’s reaction, as she naively fluttered the pages through her fingers before asking who she was.

*

As he prised open the front door, he cursed the stiffness of the lock, or the key, remembering Dawn’s unfulfilled promise that she would sort out what was now becoming a tiresome issue. The distant view of a cluttered kitchen prompted a swift closure of the door before him, whilst his ears listened out for the slightest creak of a floorboard, the shuffle of feet, the sigh of a bored flatmate. The silence he heard was comforting, albeit a little disappointing, for he could not be completely at ease whilst the possibility of an untimely interruption remained. Noise, however annoying, was consistent. Silence never could be.

He laid Mansfield to rest on the stool in the hall and climbed the stairs, alone.

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