Pedigree Crush with a Twist of Passion chapter seven

Chapter Seven

Violet hated watching the boys become men. One by one they slipped through her fingers and became not just her boys, but people in their own right. She had held them to her, protected them from the world. They were little projections of her, innocents in need of firm management.
She had stood open mouthed and momentarily speechless the first time one of them had risen in front of her and openly defied her command. He knew his own mind, that boy of hers. He was her strong one. He was a fifteen year old hippy the first time he stood, hands on hips, furious points of crimson on his cheeks and said, ‘Mother, I will not have time to practise my trombone tonight. I have other plans.’ Where was the wheedling voice? ‘Aw, do I have to?’ It was the most rebellious thing any of them had ever said to her.
He didn’t sound like her son, this gruff-voiced man-becoming with determination blazing in his eyes.
‘You will do whatever I tell you to do, my boy,’ she had finally answered.
‘I’m sorry, Mother, I don’t want to argue with you. But I’ve had enough of practising my trombone every night, followed by another hour on the violin, followed by a third of homework before bed. From now on, I’ll play when I want to play. I’ve put in the practice. Since I was eight years old I’ve practiced my music for two hours a night, five days a week. Surely music is supposed to be a passion, something inside you. I’m coming to detest my music. You are driving me to hate it.’
‘How dare you stand there hurling your unfounded accusations? Do you have any idea how much I’ve spent on you and your brothers, so that you can attain the high standard you have as competent musicians? All I ask is a little hard work in return. A little dedication, is that too much to wish for? A little loyalty from my own flesh and blood. That awful rock and roll babble that you try and call music is rotting your brain, child.’
It was the same old tired guilt trip, she knew she relied on aged material, dredged up every time one of them dared to disagree with her, but it had always worked before.
‘And, what’s more, I think it’s time we all had our own bedrooms. All our lives we’ve had to share. Will you please at least think about it, Mother?’ He left the room, his too-long-for-his-body legs taking giant strides across the Axminster carpet, his broadening shoulders flung back and defiant. He left her standing there, mid-lecture, without waiting at attention to be dismissed. ‘Fucking bitch,’ he said, too far from her and too low to be heard.
‘Come back here right now. Don’t you dare walk away from me. You just wait until I tell your father,’ she yelled after him. That was a first, too; Violet had never relied on Donald for back up in any situation. She had never needed to.
She lost him that day. In standing up to her, he made the transition from boy to man. He stayed, of course, until school was finished but he was the first of the Woods boys to leave home. He knew the day he left that he would never live under his mother’s smothering breast again. He went to college and, from there, to university studying mathematics and the sciences. Watching him leave home broke his mother’s heart for ten minutes, but she recovered nicely in time for the seven-thirty pensioners’ bingo.
The day of the argument, he stalked off, resolute and determined that he would continue to make a stand against Violet’s bullying ways. Not knowing quite what to do with his allocated music practise time, he took apart a transistor radio that had broken some months before. He loved anything with working parts and he broke down every component of the radio that could be taken to bits. He cleaned each piece on a soft cloth and assembled them methodically in front of him. He began the task of putting it back together. His fingers worked deftly. Instinct, more than memory, told him where each component belonged and in a short time he was turning the dial on the old fashioned radio to find a station. His mood was calm and tranquil now; he was doing what he loved to do.
The first station he found came alive beneath his fingers in a hiss of sibilant static. A song was playing that he didn’t know. He wasn’t listening to it. He was too busy being pleased with himself for fixing a radio that half an hour earlier had been destined for the dustbin. Something happened to him that afternoon, sitting on his knees on the bedroom floor, his eyes glowing with calm and quiet pleasure, the words coming out of the radio seemed to be sung just for his ears. He straightened up and listened closely.
If I could save time in a bottle,
The first thing that I’d like to do,
Is save everyday ’til eternity passes,
So I could spend each day with you.
That single verse held his future in its melody. As though a light had shone through the ceiling and bonked him on the head, he suddenly knew what he was going to do with the rest of his life. The hippy, who that day had stood up to his domineering mother, was going to make time.
Violet was wary of him from that afternoon. He was different. He had a grown-up confidence and wasn’t as malleable. She was frightened that this new found independence would rub off on the rest of her children. She had their futures written, their careers mapped out. They would follow their parents into the family business. She wanted all of her boys to work in the hotel, all in positions of responsibility, all pulling together to make the hotel better than it already was. The Halcyon Woods Hotel was a family affair and she fully intended to keep it that way. Her boys would be allowed to go off and finish their education at university. She would even permit them a year to play on the continent and find themselves, if she had to. That was the fashionable thing. But it was always understood that the boys would return immediately after their year out, funded by Violet as a bribe, to take their rightful positions in the business. They had been groomed for it since they were old enough to stand. One day, Violet and Donald would hand over the reins of the company to their children. It was already written.

The fraudster was her clever boy, although she didn’t know he would become one. He was quite happy to slot into the role his mother had carved out of the lodestone for him. He had no ambition or dreams of his own and was perfectly willing to float on the prophecies of Violet. After all, it was in his best interests to do so. The fraudster did all his wrong doings well away from his mother’s sight. He never did challenge her in any way. He passed from boy to man without a cross word. It was never once threatened that he would be struck from the parental heritage. He worked hard at manipulating his mother, while all the time keeping her sweet. He went directly from public school to university, reading mathematics and science like his brother, but alongside those subjects he crammed hard to fit in an accountancy course and a degree in hotel management. His life-road was charted and he saw no valid reason to veer from it.
Like his brother with the preference for pink, he took stupid chances. Occasionally, when the bar areas were deserted for whatever reason, the fraudster would swoop in, calculating as a magpie, and steal from the till. It was still two years before security cameras would be installed but, by the time they were, the first four Woods boys were all pursuing their education elsewhere. There were sackings, and raised indignant voices when the tills were found to be seriously down. Violet had no time for the innocent until proven guilty clause that the rest of Britain clung to as being right. If money could not be accounted for in one of the Halcyon Woods tills, then whoever had control of that till, at that time, was removed from her employment. Along with the other spate of thefts, the finger of accusation never stuck its bony presence in any of her children’s faces.

The eavesdropper was her thoughtful boy, but didn’t care for others. Thoughtful was the only adjective she could find to suit this son that didn’t sound too unpleasant. Violet didn’t like to see any unpleasant traits in her little men. Sly and cunning were two words that would have fit equally well, but she didn’t like those at all. This boy flapped his ears at private conversation, pressed himself against closed doors to listen, and told tales out of school. He held no allegiance to anybody and was often labelled a grass and a turncoat by his brothers. The first sign of trouble, and without any form of discipline or torture, this one would sing like a canary in spring for the pure joy of doing so. He had a head for facts, but never used it for storing anything useful. All of his learning was deleted in favour of an empty head, in which to store gossip and salacious tittle-tattle. When he was twelve, he started to keep a journal. He became obsessed with filling it. Book after book was dutifully written and then locked securely away in his personal safe. For three years, when asked what he wanted for Christmas and Birthdays, he said he wanted his own safe to keep his personal stuff in. the other’s wanted one, too, but for them it was only a whim. Finally Violet sent men to manufacture a hole in the wall big enough to hold a small safe. He kept a picture of his mother over it and joked that it would deter any would-be safebreakers. Of course, his brother’s all had a crack at opening the combination on the safe. They were never fewer than three numbers away from success.
He knew things.
And what he knew, he wrote in his journals.
He was her favourite boy. The one who would never leave her. He was devoted to his mother. He wanted to be like her in strength and character. His childhood had not been easy but he felt that it had made him the fine man that he came to be. In reality he was not a fine man at all. He was a mummy’s boy, precious and pathetic. He debated at the debating society and came out with a swelled head, after shouting everybody down until he was hoarse. It didn’t matter if his opinion was a valid one, only that he was heard. One by one, the other members stopped attending the society.
He made patches for clothes, he wanted to be a hippy like his brother, but his mother wouldn’t let him grow his hair past his collar. He wasn’t allowed to sew the patches he made onto his clothes either, so he made them with the intention of selling them to other people at festivals around the country. But his mother wouldn’t let him go to festivals—rough places, full of dirty drop outs, she said—so he made his patches and kept them in a bag in his wardrobe. He liked to sit in the hotel foyer cutting pieces of felt and sewing them together, but Mother said he looked like a sissy, sitting in public sewing, so she made him go to his room as though making patches was something to be ashamed of. He collected things, too. Beer mats and beer towels, stamps and patches, pin badges and dead insects, Super Cars cards and later, real super cars as they came on the market.
He took eggs from the nests of roosting birds.
He would have made the perfect bookworm, but he didn’t like books. Reading took too much of his attention and he had no opportunity to voice his opinion. So he didn’t read at all. The only other thing he liked doing was talking at the guests. He’d hang around reception and then pounce. Sometimes he saw guests poking their heads round the graphite pillars in reception before running very fast out of the door and down the drive to freedom. It didn’t matter, and he wasn’t offended, he usually managed to catch them on their return.
Violet would stand at reception glowing with pride as she watched her friendly son, deep in conversation with a party of hotel guests. He was her ambassador and his arms would gesticulate with enthusiasm as he signalled the air or slapped the table for emphasis. This was the last of her children still at home. She wouldn’t let him go, she wouldn’t. He was such a good boy, this one.

The gambler liked to play cards. What started as a little bit of fun became a nuisance. He had to be stopped from looking for likely people to trap into a game of Newmarket for pennies. The gambler liked two things. He liked girls and he liked money, the latter partly because he quickly discovered that money could buy him girls. He was fourteen when a fiver and ten fags bought him his first blow job. Suzie Philips had met him after their last period of the day. They found a quiet place in the Woods at the back of the hotel. She’d never sucked anybody off before but the gambler had nothing to compare it to as far as good blow jobs went, and he blew like Old Yeller under high pressure build up.
She tried to kiss him afterwards but he didn’t want any of that. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said, backing away and putting distance between them. ‘I’ll see you in school tomorrow.’ He was a little bit disgusted when he saw her trying to clear her throat and making little coughing noises but, if the price was right, he would definitely do it again.
‘Hey, what about my fags and money?’ she called after him.
He walked back to her, pulled a crumpled five pound note out of his trouser pocket and handed it to her. He took a ten pack of Embassy No. 1 from the inside pocket of his school blazer, opened the cellophane, took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, ‘One for the road, babe.’ He’d heard James Dean say that in a film. He thought it was cool. ‘That was great, by the way; I need a fag after that. See you tomorrow.’
He threw the packet with the other nine cigarettes to her. She tried to catch them but failed and had to scramble in the fallen leaves at the bottom of the tree he’d leaned against to look for them. He swaggered as he walked away and never looked back until he was sure that she’d also left. Cautiously he doubled back and met Pete Walker and Jamie Dodd back at the clearing, they had come out of the cover of the trees.
‘You jammy bastard,’ Pete said. ‘I can’t believe she just did that. She went with Robbie Jones and wouldn’t even let him touch her tits.’
‘I’ve still got a fucking hard on,’ moaned Jamie. ‘It’s not fair, you get sucked off and we have to fucking pay for it.’
‘Don’t bet it you can’t afford to lose. And speaking of which, gentlemen, I do believe you have some settling up to do.’ The gambler was smiling. This was one of the best days ever.
Both of the other boys dug into the pockets of their school pants and pulled out their money. They coppered up two pounds fifty each and handed it over to the gambler. Jamie put his hand into his blazer pocket and brought out ten fags. He took the cellophane off, took one out of the packet and lit it. ‘One for the road, mate. I need a fag after—’
The gambler snatched the lit cigarette from between his lips and put it in his own mouth. ‘Some men are born to win and others will always be losers.’ He grinned, turned his back on his mates and walked away, making sure that his strut was cool and his manner confidant.
At the other side of the clearing in the woods a fourth boy was sitting with his back against a tree. The eavesdropper was writing furiously, his hand flying across the page. He had a sly smile on his face.