Jago by Kim Newman Page B

couldn’t think of a casual enough excuse for getting in touch. In the end, she had called him, inviting him to a private view at the crafts shop where she worked half the week. There, he had been introduced to her elderly parents. Her father took an instant dislike to him which had since grown. Hazel only had three small pots among the new work on display, but he bought one.
    It was on the desk now, pens and pencils in it. She had since told him that her tutor helped with the glaze, but he still thought it one of her best pieces. At the end of the evening, before she went off with her family, they kissed seriously…
    ‘Come on, Patch,’ Hazel said, louder than her normal level, ‘you know what Dad’s like!’
    …and eventually, after meals and movies and weekend afternoons, they were in bed in his flat with nothing else to do but make love. It was rather tentative at first, but became more rewarding as spring faded into summer and the flowers dried up and died. Apart from a brief getting-it-out-of-the-way talk about contraception, they had not discussed their sex life much. Recently, it hadn’t been much to talk about.
    Hazel was laughing now, and had come out of her corner.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, looking at the sickly garden, ‘it’s lovely here.’
    When they had finished talking, Hazel gave him back the phone, compressing the aerial with a deft push.
    ‘Well?’
    Hazel bit her lip. ‘It’s Dad again, you know…’
    ‘The same thing?’
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘I don’t see what the fuss is. Patch left home years ago.’
    ‘Patch is Patch, I’m not. She says Dad says Mum’s having angina twinges.’
    ‘And you’re to rush to the bedside?’
    Hazel shrugged. ‘Patch didn’t say Dad said that.’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘You shouldn’t take against Dad, Paul. He’s only concerned.’
    Hazel walked back to the studio, and Paul looked up the hill at the trees beyond the property. Sunlight reflected on something, and he half imagined an enemy, spying.

6
    A s soon as his brother said, ‘I’d shag her if she had a paper bag over her head’, Teddy knew he was going to get bashed. As certain as night follows day and flies swarm on cowshit. There was nothing he could do about it. Whenever Terry said something stupid, a clever answer popped into Teddy’s head and he had to let it out. If he had to be thumped a certain number of times in his life, this was as good a way as any to use them up.
    ‘I reckon,’ Teddy began, pausing to catch his brother’s attention, ‘I reckon youm’d have more luck with girls if youm wore the paper bag.’
    There was a pause as it sank in. Terry always took a few seconds more than a normal person to get the funny. Teddy listened to flies buzz, and waited for the thump. Terry looked at him, nearly cross-eyed, and, quick as a snake once he had worked it out, leaned over to get him. Teddy took the casual but knuckly backhander on the ear. It hurt, but it could have been worse. If they were out with Terry’s mates and Teddy showed him up, his brother used closed fists. After sixteen years of sharing a room, Teddy was an expert on what his brother would do if provoked. It had taken him a long time to realize not everybody acted like a caveman.
    ‘You’m stupid!’
    Whenever Teddy proved he was cleverer than his brother, Terry said he was stupid. Teddy sometimes reckoned he was stupid; for not keeping his mouth shut. But it was a waste not to use a funny when one came along.
    Her name was Hazel, and Teddy couldn’t see anything wrong with her face. Especially not from three hundred yards away, using a pair of binoculars that didn’t really work. Terry wanted women to look like the glossy tarts in the magazines under his bed.
    They had been watching her from the top of Gosmore Farm orchard for over a week now. Neither she nor her boyfriend had climbed that far up the hill, so they hadn’t been found out. So far. They would be in the end. If Terry was in it, they always got