‘Hmmmmm?’

  ‘About the wedding,’ Morag said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What?’ Aggy asked. ‘Oh, the wedding. I’ll just take a pile of books and sit at the back. It’ll be exactly the same as being at home.’

  ‘Except for the hats,’ Morag said. ‘No, on second thoughts, it’ll be exactly the same as being at home. Lots of people overreacting, plenty of children being sick, and the most important person being ignored.’

  ‘Oh yes, I do know what you mean,’ said Lily, forgetting her new-found detachment and putting on an air of immense suffering.

  ‘I didn’t mean you,’ said Morag, annoyed. All the Gonks were having a meeting in Lily and Aggy’s room.

  ‘Well, I look at it like this,’ said Josh. ‘It’s a ride in the countryside and a plate of free sarnies.’

  ‘But it’s the most important day in anyone’s life,’ Lily said, aghast. ‘The culmination of living, the peak of a person’s emotional life; the only day when you could wear half the fruit counter of Sainsbury’s on your head without any adverse comment, and all you can think about is crab paste sandwiches? No-one will ever want to marry you.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry anyone,’ Josh said, sticking his tongue out. ‘All that happens when you get married is you buy a poky little house and spend the rest of your life wallpapering and having babies. I won’t ever get married.’

  ‘Same here,’ Morag said, sitting back on Lily’s bed. ‘I shall live in London and write my masterpiece, unhindered by male intervention. All you men do is lose socks and drink all the milk.’

  ‘I do not drink all the milk,’ said Josh, getting worked up. ‘And if we’re going to say the things women do, they hog the bathroom and lose the A-Z.’

  ‘Look, it wasn’t lost,’ said Morag, as if this argument had been argued before. ‘I knew it was in my room, somewhere. And look who’s talking, Mr Oops-I’ve-Just-Lost-The-Last-Shed-Key.’

  ‘Well, we know who lost the other six,’ Josh said, all snide and snickerty.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Morag said.

  ‘It wasn’t me either,’ Josh said indignantly.

  ‘Of course it was,’ Morag said, slowly and carefully gaining hold of the edge of a pillow. ‘You’re the only person I know who thinks putting the key down the slot in the toaster is good crime-prevention.’

  ‘It is until someone wants toast,’ Josh said, tightening his hold on Aggy’s pillow behind his back. ‘Someone fat and always hungry.’

  The fight ran its usual course.

  Poppy was the first to awake on the day of the wedding. It was a golden, temple-stillness morning, and the diffused sunlight shone on Poppy’s curls as she hopped out of bed and wandered into Josh’s room.

  Josh was half in, half out of his bed; his duvet was caught on the bedpost and trailing on the floor. Poppy sat down quietly on the carpet and watched him, thoughtfully.

  Josh stirred, moaned a little as he snagged his toenail on the sheet, and settled back down into sleep. Poppy, not taking her eyes off Josh, walked over to his chest of drawers and took out all his socks. Silently, cat-like, she crept into Lily and Aggy’s room and placed Josh’s socks under a pile of battered Vogues, stolen from the dentist’s waiting-room. Then she went back to bed, smiling.

  ‘Go and check the car, Bill,’ Carol said, struggling into her dress.

  ‘Don’t you trust my friends at all?’ Bill asked, ramming his foot into his shoe. ‘He said he’s fixed it, so why doubt the man?’

  ‘Because he’s one of your friends and because he asked you to trust him,’ Carol said, tying the nasty floppy’ yellow bow about her neck. ‘I trust Big Rod about as much as I admire his mother’s taste in names.’

  ‘Big Rod didn’t have a mother,’ Bill said, fishing bits of rubbish out of his trouser pockets and throwing them on the dressing table. ‘He was suckled by wolves and taught to wrestle by wild apes. That’s why I don’t question his word.’

  ‘Just go and check the car,’ Carol said. ‘To put my mind at rest.’

  ‘It’s not exactly doing double-time now,’ Bill muttered, out of earshot.

  ‘OmyGodOmyGodOmyGod,’ Josh moaned, hurtling around his room. ‘I can’t find any socks.’

  ‘It’s gross,’ Aggy said.

  ‘I like it,’ Lily said.

  ‘It’s gross,’ Morag said.

  ‘Well, I’m only lending it you out of the kindness of my heart,’ Lily said. ‘That and it’s too small for me. You can take it or leave it, Aggy.’

  ‘I haven’t got anything else,’ Aggy said mournfully.

  Morag and Lily were standing around the half-dressed Aggy, debating on the subject of clothes. Morag was clad in a rainbow patched dress and wore her tartan dressing gown over the top. She looked as if someone had poured liquid clothes over her and they had solidified on their way to the floor.

  Lily was wearing an ice-cream-pink skirt, a flamingo-pink lacy shirt, day-glo pink tights, puce-pink shoes, and she held a faded red handbag. Lily longed for the day she would be all in pink.

  Aggy was dressed in an amalgamation of her elder sisters’ clothes: a warped red and green cord skirt of Morag’s, merrily patched with denim, and a baggy and rather sad-looking vest that had seen but couldn’t remember better days. She was holding a maroon blouse of Lily’s that Morag had named ‘Variations on the Theme of Frills’ some years back. And she was gulping.

  Bill circled the car and prodded the tyre knowledgeably with his toe. The car looked all right.

  *

  ‘OmyGodOmyGodOmyGod, I can’t find any socks,’ Josh moaned, as he hurled himself downstairs.

  ‘You could wear a cardigan over it,’ Morag said helpfully.

  ‘I’ve got a nice pink one,’ Lily offered. Aggy’s lip trembled.

  Carol looked at the two dogs who were sitting so trustfully, staring at her, as she made sandwiches for the journey. Bob cocked his head to one side and whined intelligently. Max licked his bottom in a loyal way. They’d be so lonely . . .

  ‘OmyGodlcan’tfindany socks.’

  ‘—I just know I’m going to be sick—’

  ‘Pass another Murray Mint—’

  ‘—purple dinosaur—’

  ‘I still don’t see why we had to bring the dogs—’

  ‘Left or right at Newbury?—’

  ‘Can’t they put some decent music on Radio One?’

  ‘Someone has sat on my hat—’

  ‘GOOD.’

  Carol was not coping very well with the hundred and one problems that beset her. She was regretting bringing the dogs, wished she’d had a pee at the last petrol station, and was beginning to understand why everyone in the whole world was so anti-wedding.

  Bill’s questioning was getting more and more frantic as a column of traffic built up behind them.

  ‘Oh, left,’ Carol said, hoping she was right. The page they were supposed to be on had been used to wipe up sick in Banbury before Carol had known they would need it, and Carol hoped a Woman’s Instinct included navigation.

  ‘Me want a sweetie,’ Poppy said, from her perch on Morag’s knee.

  ‘Here, have mine,’ Josh said, taking a break from making the dogs stay in the boot.

  The dogs surged forward and trampled on Lily. Carol felt the first prod of a headache.

  Fulk and Gabbo stared down at the first arrivals.

  ‘I love a wedding,’ Gabbo said, smiling soppily.

  ‘I bloody hate them,’ Fulk snapped. ‘Bloody flowers.’ He sneezed again.

  ‘I bet you’re the only gargoyle in the world with hayfever,’ Gabbo said, with a note of admiration in his voice.

  ‘’S one too bloody many,’ Fulk grizzled.

  ‘You’re a novelty,’ Gabbo said blithely.

  ‘You’re a—’ Fulk sneezed. Gabbo motioned him to hush, as more of the congregation were arriving.

  Morag stood in the doorway and stared around the interior of the church.

  ‘Where are the vegetables?’ she asked, looking behind the doors.

  ‘What vegetables?’ Carol asked, putting down Poppy and fiddling with her dress.

  ‘The vegetables,’ Morag said. ‘The marrow and the turnips and the manky pumpkin with the dent in the side. The tatty bundles of wheat that shed all over the floor; the three tins of marked-down rice pudding. Where are they?’

  ‘Only Harvest Festival, Morag,’ Bill said, striding purposefully down the aisle and beckoning the other Narmos to follow him. They did. Josh followed last, employing a strange sort of crouching gait in an effort to make his trousers look longer and cover up his sock-free zone.

  The Wedding March struck up.

  Clorinda walked down the aisle in a dress that could have quite easily paid the Narmos’ leccy bills for a year. She was smiling widely and trying to ignore the embarrassing sniffles that were increasing in volume from her mother. Her father, walking beside her, could be described in one word. Pinstriped.

  He wore a pinstriped suit with a pinstriped shirt and a pinstriped tie, and his balding head with the few strands of remaining hair brushed over the top looked pinstriped.

  His attitude was pinstriped, and if anyone asked him what his favourite colour was, he would say ‘anything with a nice pinstripe’.

  The congregation sat down.

  ‘Dearly beloved,’ the vicar intoned. A hush fell on all relatives.

  ‘Want a pee, Mummy,’ Poppy said, in a voice that carried to the deafest relative’s hearing aid. All the hats turned in Carol’s direction.

  ‘I’ll take her, Mum,’ Morag hissed, making the sign of the Brownie Guides. ‘My good deed for the day and all that.’

  Carol nodded, and leant back in her pew as Morag and Poppy stumbled past and out of the church.

  Morag propped herself up against the church wall, and grinned. The extra pop she’d fed Poppy on the way down hadn’t been wasted. Poppy struggled with her knickers on top of Mrs Peyton-Price’s final resting place.

  ‘Poppy!’ Morag hissed in alarm. ‘Not there!’

  Poppy moved off sideways, knickers around her ankles, and peed on a clump of daisies.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Morag grinned, shaking hands with herself. ‘Truly, I am a genius. The face of a bunny rabbit, the body of a hippo, the wit of an angry crocodile and the brains of a top-heavy weasel. Well done, Morag. Give yourself five.’ She smiled indulgently at her little sister.

  Poppy pulled up her knickers, picked one of the daisies and gave it to Morag.

  ‘Poppy,’ she said, sniffing the air, ‘would you like to come on a little walk with me around this charming rustic church, and admire its architecture?’

  Poppy grinned.

  ‘I wish they’d take their bloody flowers with them,’ Fulk moaned, as another sneeze sent small fragments of him plummeting to the floor. ‘They just leave them here and it’s not very considerate.’ He gave a sniff.

  ‘It’s just unlucky about your arms,’ Gabbo consoled.

  ‘You mean the ones I haven’t got?’ Fulk said.

  ‘The very ones,’ Gabbo said cheerfully. ‘It’s a bit messy, isn’t it, sneezing with no arms.’

  ‘Yes, it can get a little damp,’ Fulk said, with artificial breeziness. ‘Ideal condition for growing lichens and moss, though, of which I have plenty. I should say I’m probably a lichenologist’s dream—’

  ‘A veritable gargoyleologist’s delight,’ Gabbo added happily.

  ‘And you’re most probably a—’ Fulk sneezed.

  It was cold, wet, and very late. Morag, Lily, Josh and Aggy were pushing the Cortina through the deserted car-park. Morag was whistling ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ with manic cheeriness.

  Carol was sitting on the back seat with Poppy, picking over a bowl of Twiglets. The two dogs had their noses pressed up against the back window and were panting smugly.

  Bill poked his head out of the driver’s window. ‘Faster!’ he bellowed.

  Morag changed her whistle from ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ to ‘Colonel Bogey’.

  Bill was in a chainsaw-usingly bad mood, and most of the skin from his knuckles was missing. His temper had escalated further when the dogs had escaped from the car and rolled in fox poo.

  Poppy took great delight in saying, ‘Urgh, wot dat smell?’ every few minutes.

  ‘You’re going slower than the rest of us, Josh,’ Lily said, glancing sideways at her brother. Josh modified his hiding-the-bare-ankles stagger slightly.

  The motor started, and the Gonks swarmed into the car, grabbing as many Twiglets as they could as they passed Carol.

  ‘That’s it,’ Bill said with iron resolve as they drove home. ‘This car is No More.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Bat

  Wolverhampton Train Station in summer. It’s quite nice, actually: three day-glo orange bins, a burgundy newspaper kiosk, a couple of empty Coke cans and the odd train. A group of students huddle at the dry end of the platform in a soggy, Marmite saturated heap, their fashionable knapsacks digging into their shoulders, the rain dripping into their Doc Marten boots. They resemble little rain-drenched beetles.

  The rain is pouring down, venomous in its attempt to wash away the concrete; pounding on the nasty, cheap benches with the middles ripped out; trying to cry away the litter and the smoke and the greyness.

  The tannoy is broken and, as the train pulls into the station with its hypnotic whir, all the wet beetles scuttle forward hopefully.

  It is not their train.

  They seep back, disappointed.

  An angered squawk sends the porter scurrying from his little hut towards the train, but he is too late, as a door is flung open and a leg clad in dark green, scratchy wool trousers is put on the ground in much the same way Queen Victoria would have alighted if she were alive and inclined to wear that sort of thing.

  Denis, a promising art student, peeked out from under his dripping hood, took note of the legs’ owner with the habit of his artistic training and, for years afterwards, particularly following vicious curries and promiscuous oysters, wished he hadn’t.

  A purple tartan jacket, worn over a vermillion shirt, was ornamented in places with various wild animals leaping in various directions. A string of pearls counterset beautifully the burnt-ochre tam-o’-shanter with pom-pom on a thread. Both lumpy tan suitcases clashed with everything.

  The face resembled a particularly weathered gargoyle, with the added bonus of an unhealthy dose of the holier-than-thous ingrained into its countenance through the years.

  It was female.

  It was moving in his direction.

  It was the Bat.

  Josh was slumped in his room, bending plasticine animals into rude positions. It was a restless day: it seemed unwilling to admit it was Monday, felt like it was made out of congealed grey flannel, and tasted dirty yellow.

  Josh had tried reading, but the words had not been in a friendly mood. They had mooched off the page, muttering about ‘meeting their mates at a football match’ and ‘promised lifts’. He had tried watching the telly, but there were only old black-and-white films on, with lots of people called Celia telling Johnny to do it for her sake.

  It was one of those days.

  ‘Yew. Yew there. What are you doing?’

  ‘Um, waiting for a train,’ Denis answered, wondering if he might be slightly foolish in doing so.

  ‘Well,’ said the Bat, in a manner that conveyed the utmost distaste. ‘Really.’ She retreated into her mind for a minute and came up choking, metaphorically speaking.

  ‘Tell me, where does one find a tixi around here?’ she asked, rearranging the paisley shawl draped around her shoulders.

  ‘A what?’ Denis asked desperately, wishing he’d walked to Manchester instead.

  ‘A tixi, my laddie, a tixi. Are you devoid of comprehension?’

  ‘Well, he is a student,’ one of his best friends said, from the relative safety of distance.

  ‘Ah, there’s the porter,’ the Bat said, sighting him and stiffening. ‘Porter! Hey, porter—!’

  Denis sat on the edge of the broken bench, under a very persistent drip, and wondered whether the Bat was a hallucination or for real.

  John the Taxi, as he was known locally, was sitting in the tool of his trade, Bertha, eating a pork and pickle sandwich and listening to Country and Western on the radio. Apart from the odd lapse in musical taste he was a nice man, and didn’t deserve what happened next.

  A ring-encrusted finger tapped the window next to his head, and a face reminiscent of a cauliflower with an attitude problem mouthed the words, ‘Open the door.’

  John opened the door and continued eating his sandwich. The Bat got in.

  ‘Rope Street,’ she said. The harrassed porter dumped her luggage in the boot of the taxi and went back to his little hut as fast as his shrunken trousers would let him.

  John maintained a steady rhythm with his jaws, and didn’t blink.

  The Bat tightened her lips and rapped on the glass that separated them.

  ‘Rope Street,’ she said, irritably.

  John didn’t move, and chewed a crust thoughtfully.

  The Bat pushed back the glass partition and poked his shoulder.

  ‘Now look here, young man, I’ve been sitting here waiting for over a minute. Take me to Rope Street and – don’t smile at me like that!’

  John looked at his watch, slowly. A small piece of pickle escaped from his sandwich and fell on to the gear stick. He turned to the Bat.

  ‘Look, darlin’, I’m on me dinner break and I’ve got seventy-six seconds left, so if you’ll just sit there nice and quiet, I’ll finish me sarnie. Then I’ll take you to Rope Street.’ He took another bite of his sandwich.

  The Bat fumed silently.

  Josh threw a purple sheep into the empty ice-cream tub from whence it came, and sat on his hands on the edge of his bed. He got the idea that the sheep, the ice-cream tub, the bed, all wanted to be somewhere else. And as for his bedroom . . .

  The floor often looked as though it had a hangover, although that might be something to do with the nasty carpet. Whenever Josh came into the room in a hurry, the walls always looked as though they had just left a particularly good party and had been sorry to go.