Free Light Errant by Chaz Brenchley Page A

strangers both knew me for what I was, no disguising it.
    o0o
    â€˜The bistro thing down by the station’ turned out to be a tapas bar. I couldn’t believe it; Mediterranean culture, come this far? To my little insular pocket of the north?
    There it was, though, and looking legitimately Spanish, too: cheap and a little sordid, very basic, nothing spent on the decor. No Costa glitz, but this place could have been lifted whole from any town in the hinterland. Even the menu in the window was authentic, hand-written on a dirty piece of paper that had been there so long it was fraying at the edges. Tortillas and salads, mejillones and calamares and gambas , or if you wanted meat rather than seafood there was chorizo picante , jamon serrano , albondigas diablo...
    â€œOkay?” Jon asked.
    â€œTerrific, so far.” Except that you had to buy food if you wanted to drink, I’d forgotten Britain’s extraordinary licensing laws; but then, why go to a tapas bar if you didn’t want to eat tapas?
    Because you want to drink decent coffee , I reminded myself, with a brief prayer offered up that there too this place might be reasonably authentic.
    o0o
    Inside, the image took something of a hammering. The TV on the wall was right enough, tuned to Eurosport, though the English commentary took the gloss off it; but the owners were a couple of Geordies, the business presumably a hangover from years of package holidays at Torremolinos or Benidorm.
    I didn’t want to sit in the window, though I’d have liked the promise of sunlight on my skin. It was a case of balancing one insecurity against another, and in the end caution won out over strength: better not to precipitate a problem, than to be ready to meet it. We took a table at the back, ordered tea and coffee for now with a thought towards maybe beer and tapas later, and waited almost without speaking until we had steaming cups in front of us and the privacy to talk undisturbed.
    â€œCome on, then,” I said, getting straight down to it against the temptation to prevaricate. “What the hell is going on?”
    They looked at each other; Janice made a gesture. “It’s your town, not mine. I’m an incomer, what do I know?” Her smile said that actually she knew a lot, or she thought she did, but she was holding back here for reasons of her own. Sort of smile I’d seen before, usually on girls; learned ’em in girlschool, I guess, or from each other. Sometimes they were even justified, but I thought likely not here. However quick to pick things up you might be, understanding the soul of this city was genetic, I thought; you had to be born here. Unless it was environmental but you still had to be born here, it had to soak like a stain into your soft baby bones, it had to come to you like a taint in your mother’s milk. I thought.
    Jonathan was native, Janice was not; Jon said, “Things changed, right after you went away, I suppose it was. That’s when it started. Your Uncle James was in charge suddenly, he was running the place; and boy, did he let everyone know it.”
    My Uncle James was a bully and a bastard. Nothing new there, nothing to make him stand out much among my male relations; but Uncle James with the power, with the dominance he’d always been denied before and with a major grudge to work out of his system—yes, I’d pretty much predicted this, that under his charge the hand of the Macallans would fall more heavily than ever on the shoulders of their victims.
    â€œEven my dad,” Jon said, “he had his little business, cleaning windows round about, clearing gutters, a bit of housepainting on the side. One-man show it was, there wasn’t enough work for me to join him, yeah? But they put the sting on him, even. And he couldn’t pay it, of course he couldn’t, not so much of his take. When he told them, they just came round at night and trashed all his gear. Burnt his van