The Houdini Effect by Bill Nagelkerke Read Free Book Online Page A

but the full stop was not the end of what May wanted to
say. So much for her earlier reticence. I had the sudden
premonition that she could become unstoppable. It was like a tap
washer had split. (We’d had our fair share of leaking taps since
we’d moved in so I know what I’m talking about.) The water didn’t
start to gush exactly, it just began to drip. Most steadily.
    ‘ Up until then Lawrence did
most of the maintenance on the house himself,’ May said. ‘Barry
felt . . . ’ she glanced furtively into the gathering gloom of the
garden, ‘. . . Barry felt that Laurie’s standards were far too
high. Because
    Laurie judged him you see and found Barry
wanting.’
    ‘ Did he?’ said Mum (I’m not
sure who the ‘he’ referred to, Laurie or Barry. You
decide.)
     
    In the pause that followed Mum and I looked
at each other as furtively as May had done. It was as if we could
read each other’s minds. We could both ‘see’ what May was getting
it. She was saying something (between the lines) about Barry. But
what? And how could we ask her what she
    really meant unless May herself was prepared
to
    say?
    It didn’t seem as if she was.
    ‘ Well, Laurie would have
got on well with Jim,’ Mum said at last. (Jim = Dad)
    ‘ Like a barbecue on fire,’
I said, making an extremely feeble joke.
    Another pause. What the
stories call a pregnant pause. And then came the birth contractions, each
one several seconds apart. (I don’t hold with medical metaphors but
you can’t always get away from them.)
    ‘ . . . Laurie and Iris were
always out working in the
    garden once Laurie retired . . .’ May
said.
    ‘ . . . they had lovely
flowerbeds each year . . .’
    ‘ . . . and mountains of
vegetables . . .’
    ‘ . . . it was very sad
that they didn’t get to enjoy their retirement together for long .
. .’
    ‘ . . . Barry’s right and
wrong about Laurie,’ May said, just as Mum was about to make
another neutral sounding comment. ‘On the surface he wasn’t a very
nice man after Iris passed away . . .’
    ‘ No?’ said Mum.
    ‘ . . . but underneath he
was the same as he’d always been . . .’
    ‘ Yes?’
    ‘ . . . an old-styled
gentleman.’
    Was I right in thinking that once again we
were supposed to read between the lines here?
     
    (DEEP THOUGHT WARNING #4) Reading between
the lines, did this mean that even though Laurie hadn’t seemed so
nice anymore, underneath he still was. And was May therefore
hinting that
    the opposite was true of Barry, that he
seemed
    okay on the surface but, underneath, he
wasn’t
    nice at all? Or was I inventing all this
simply to keep boredom at bay?)
     
    May’s next contraction was
swifter than the others. She seemed suddenly a lot more alert
- on edge - than
she had been up till now. Her words surprised Mum and me with their
hint of ferocity.
    ‘ I don’t think leopards can
change their spots so quickly and completely, do you?’ she
said.
     
    Leopard spots
     
    Maybe Mum was on more confident ground here.
Perhaps her legal mind was able to analyze the possibilities and
work out, with greater certainty than I could, who and what May was
talking about. I could only guess. Was Laurie the leopard? Or was
Barry? Was the reference to leopards a significant metaphor or just
a cliché?
    ‘ I wouldn’t have thought
so,’ Mum replied, slipping her professional voice easily into the
conversation. Maybe she was already subconsciously starting to
think of May as a client rather than just a neighbour. To date, Mum
had deftly tackled a few acrimonious cases of separation and
divorce. Had she suddenly sensed another one on the
horizon?
    Whoever the leopard was, I wasn’t so sure
about them not being able to change their spots. Some things did
trip people over the edge and change them completely. Good people
turning bad, bad people turning good.
    There was a story in that. Probably lots
of
    stories.
    ‘Laurie never accepted that Iris was dead,’
May suddenly said. ‘That always