Eric Bell

By Keith Baty

When Terry Ellis sees Eric Bell in town one day, he’s puzzled because Eric’s been dead for 18 months. Hoping to uncover the truth, Terry embarks on an event-filled quest that leads him to encounter a rich and varied cast of characters, each with their own story to tell.

Based in and around a small city in the far north of England, Eric Bell explores how, in a community where everyone seems to know everyone else, a man must find a way to disappear in order to save his family.

Shifting between past and present, truth and deception, and the uncertainty of memory, nothing – and nobody – is as it first seems.

Part-mystery, part-thriller, part-memoir, this twisting psychological drama examines the particular difficulties facing men losing their grip on life, love and ambition as time erodes previous certainties and the future looks hazy…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398479876

Keith Baty

Originally a teacher – because he loved the smell of plasticine – Keith Baty has spent most of his career in education bringing words and music alive for others. He lives on the beautiful Solway Coast, where the ever-changing sky helps him to create the landscapes that he puts into his novels.

Book preview

About the Author

Originally a teacher – because he loved the smell of plasticine – Keith Baty has spent most of his career in education bringing words and music alive for others. He lives on the beautiful Solway Coast, where the ever-changing sky helps him to create the landscapes that he puts into his novels.

Dedication

For Dotty (as ever)

Copyright Information ©

Keith Baty 2024

The right of Keith Baty to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398479852 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398479876 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781398479869 (Audiobook)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

1

When Terry Ellis told his mother he’d seen Eric Bell in Botchergate, she was sceptical.

I didn’t know you knew Eric, she said.

He was a guard on the railway, wasn’t he? said Terry. Before they turned into Train Managers.

She nodded and that was his cue to repeat the story of how, on the many occasions when Terry was the only passenger on the 0746 out to the coast, Eric refused to let him buy a ticket.

One fare won’t save this service, Eric had said.

Terry’s mother seemed distracted. He pressed on regardless.

Then there was that day when he pulled back his jacket and those watches were pinned inside. Just like an old-school spiv. At least he wasn’t upset when I didn’t buy one. Nor did he make me start paying for the train.

His mother looked at him.

Eric? she said. Big Eric? Lived at the top of the road? When did you see him?

Yesterday, said Terry. In that fog. But it was definitely Eric.

Eric’s been dead eighteen months, said his mother. Now, can you put a new bulb in on the stairs?

After fixing the light and pulling the bins onto the pavement, Terry walked up to the cemetery. At the main gates was the office of the Bereavements Manager.

Is Ken McKie available please? he said to the woman addressing envelopes in the cramped front office.

Ken’s up at an interment at the moment, she said. Can I help?

Is there a map of who’s buried where?

Just a minute, she said, and swivelled her chair round to the computer. Who are you looking for?

An Eric Bell, Terry said. Died about eighteen months ago.

She tapped on the keyboard. The screen lit up, but Terry couldn’t see what was on it.

There’s three Eric Bells dotted about here. Let’s see… May 23rd last year. That must be the one. He’s up at the top end, adjacent to the toilets.

She smiled sympathetically at Terry. He didn’t speak and she took this for delayed shock.

Were you close? she said.

I hadn’t…haven’t seen him for thirty years. I moved away.

I knew a June Bell and her father was called Eric. Big man. Worked on the railways.

Terry turned to leave.

Thanks, he mumbled.

He gave me a watch once, she said. It never kept the right time.

Terry closed the door behind him.

2

The following day was November 5th. Terry’s wife, Pat, was taking her Guides to the big bonfire in the park. For the second year in a row, Terry went along to look after Julie Diggle. Julie was, in Terry’s view, a fantastic kid, so why did she have to have a life-limiting illness?

The year before, Julie had been able to walk with the aid of a stick. When Terry had last seen her, at the Summer Fete, she’d been on two sticks. Now she was in a wheelchair. Terry wanted to do more for Julie but, when he mentioned this to Pat, she said it wasn’t appropriate.

Her dad’s gone off with a barmaid and her mother is in denial. She can barely cope but won’t let anyone else help with Julie. She blames herself for the girl’s illness. It runs in the family. She could have had a test but didn’t.

She’d have got rid of the unborn Julie? said Terry.

Who knows? said Pat. She took a chance and it didn’t come off.

She’s had ten years. They’ve both had ten years. In that sense, it did come off.

At the end of the bonfire, Terry was pushing Julie back to the bus. The girl was giggling with excitement.

I loved the giant Catherine Wheels, she said. What was your favourite firework?

I was hoping there’d be Jumping Jacks, said Terry. You don’t see them now but, when I was about your age, my dad let one off and it jumped into the box where the other fireworks were kept. It set them all off as well.

Julie was still laughing as the ramp lifted her up into the back of the bus.

Thanks, she said then the door closed.

Terry waved at her happy face as the bus drove off into the night.

Terry went back to the cemetery that weekend to look for Eric Bell. He walked up and down the muddy paths between the rows of gravestones but couldn’t locate him.

I should have asked the woman in the office for a map, he thought.

He sat on a rusting metal bench outside the toilet block and gazed out across the winter landscape. In the distance, beyond the black metal railings and brown river, he saw the lights of the train coming in from the coast. He wondered if the guard – or Train Manager – was trying to sell jewellery of dubious provenance to today’s customers.

After five minutes, Terry stood up and stretched, yawning at the late morning sky. As he brought his head down, he spotted Eric Bell’s name. It was on a black marble gravestone. The stones on either side had mistakes on them. One said,

IN MEMORY OF JOHN (JOHNNY) GREEN – LOVING HUSBAND AND BOTHER

The other said,

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MARY ELLEN. GONE TO HAEVEN

In his mind’s eye, Terry saw Haeven as a quiet coastal resort in Southern Europe. At this very moment, Mary Ellen was lying on a winter beach sunning herself, unaware that her holiday was being commemorated in a most unusual way.

Eric wasn’t there when I looked before but now, he is, thought Terry. It’s like death in reverse.

3

I have to stop thinking, thought Terry. But I can only do that by thinking myself into a state of not thinking. Is that possible? Perhaps Pat can help. Where is she?

He looked at his hands, quivering by his sides. He was lying down. No, he was in bed. His was the only bed in the room. He could see a woman with a tea trolley.

Tea? she asked, smiling.

Is there coffee? he asked.

There is. Sugar? Milk?

A little of each, said Terry.

He suddenly felt hungry.

Have you a biscuit please? he said.

Yes, she said, depositing his drink and two Ginger Nuts on the bedside table.

As she wheeled the trolley out of the room, Terry caught a quick view of two people in the corridor. One looked like Pat. She was talking to a man with a beard. Terry didn’t trust anyone with a beard: they always had something to hide.

Terry’s friend Leo had a beard. At work, Leo couldn’t walk along the corridor from his office to the stairs leading outside because it meant passing George’s room.

It was all George’s fault, but George wasn’t to blame.

Leo found George impossibly attractive. Even glimpsing him brought Leo out in a kind of adolescent fever. Both men were married to women. Both couples had three children. George’s wife was a sugar-rush: her presence instantly energised you. Leo’s wife was a neutral on the energiser-to-drainer scale.

Leo wrote poems but hadn’t shown them to his wife in years. Not since the day she’d told him that, because she was the one who always got up when the children cried in the middle of the night, her faculty for literary criticism was currently not even on the backburner. In fact, she’d laboured, it was right off the cooker and out of the kitchen.

He hadn’t quite grasped the image but felt the sting of her disinterest to this day.

As he once again walked the longer three-sides-of-a-square corridor route to the stairs, Leo wondered if George liked poetry. He wondered if George loved his wife, the sugar-rush. He never wondered if his own wife had a point about his unwillingness to deal with crying babies. Or whether his poetry was any good. Mentally swatting away inconvenient questions was the superpower of the invincible narcissist.

Leo was, to borrow the phrase, ‘a man who combs his hair in public.’

Despite being bald.

Terry was home from hospital. It was John (Johnny)’s widow who had come across him, sprawled on the tarmac ’twixt graves and public conveniences. Years earlier, she’d been a chief inspector in the police so had known where to look for identification and who to call for help.

Today, she’d come to visit him at his house. Terry didn’t yet know about her career as a detective when Pat showed her into the living-room.

There he is, said Pat. I’ll make us a drink. This is Mrs Green, Terry. She saved your life.

Teresa, said Mrs Green as Pat left them together.

It’s a wonderful world, said Terry.

He was about to burst into song, but she was there first.

I see Teresa Green, red roses too…

Terry laughed stupidly, thinking of how Leo would have reacted to having the wind taken out of his sails like this. He wouldn’t have liked it. Leo was a smartarse. Or is it smart arse? Two words. Is there a hyphen? Terry loved Leo as a brother but, like a brother, was less sure of whether he liked him.

"Funnily enough, my Johnny used to call me Terry but everybody else calls me Teresa, said Mrs Green. It was our special thing."

Terry saw the faraway look pass briefly across her face and was – for no obvious reason – reminded of Julie Diggle, waving as the bus drove away from the bonfire.

4

Eric Bell felt the thawing droplets of freezing fog zigger down his face. He looked at Ernie Fox, all bad wig, and unnatural dentures.

Come into the back, said Ernie.

Camilla mustn’t see me.

Then it’s a good job she’s not here, said Ernie.

I had to chance it, said Eric. Was fairly sure today was your day in.

Eric, she knows. You know she knows. Now, come into the back.

Eric lowered himself carefully under the shop counter and followed Ernie through. The fumes from the paraffin heater transported him back to late childhood, when he’d first come here. Time had moved on as, in turn, Ernie’s grandad then dad ran the shop, squeezed a living from it then expired, leaving it to the next in line. The current next in line was Ernie but his nephew Willy was snapping at his heels.

It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there, said Eric, his voice punctuated by breathy gasps.

Eh? said Ernie.

I… began Eric but the bell on the shop door rang and Ernie went out to see who it was.

Eric sat down and looked at Ernie’s wet, fingerless gloves steaming on top of the heater. The odour of paraffin always made him want to sleep. He had just let the top lids of his eyes droop when he heard raised voices from the front, followed by a loud thwack and the sound of the shop door opening and closing forcefully.

Ernie came back through, an old school rounders bat in one hand and a shiny flapping £10 note in the other. Eric looked at him and raised his eyebrows. Ernie grinned.

Couple of toerags trying to sell me insurance. Twenty a week and they’d look after the shop. See no one put the window out. Or in.

Eric nodded at the tenner.

I obviously declined their generous offer. This is the money the smaller one gave me to not break his fingers like I’d just done to his pal.

They only see old people, said Eric. They don’t see our experience.

You’re right, said Ernie. Now Eric, tell me why you’re here when you’ve been dead for eighteen months.

5

Terry was talking to Leo on the phone, explaining what he’d just explained to Teresa Green.

They’re not sure yet but I think it could be catalepsy. You go rigid. Lose any sense of where you are. Silas Marner had it. The symptoms are similar.

Did you feel it coming on? said Leo.

I don’t remember but the doctor said I must have sensed I was having an attack and lowered myself to the ground. The unconscious mind preserving the about-to-fall-over body.

I didn’t know about any of this.

Neither did I, said Terry. It’s never happened before. They said it could have been brought on by stress. The internet tells me it could also be the start of Parkinson’s or I’m suffering withdrawal symptoms from cocaine.

You must be worried, said Leo.

Well, said Terry, "it’s more I should be worried but, somehow, I’m not. The time for panic is when the pathology report comes back."

Terry had no intention of panicking, but he often said things to Leo that reflected Leo’s likely mindset rather than his own. If Leo had unconsciously dropped out of his surroundings, he’d be in a 24/7 crapping-his-pants funk. Terry preferred his trousers (relatively) clean.

How are you feeling right now? said Leo.

Pretty much OK, said Terry. But never mind me. What about you? How’s the crisis going?

Crisis? said Leo.

George, said Terry. How’s it going with George?

Before moving back north, Terry had seen Leo almost every day. Now that they lived 100 miles apart, contact was increasingly rare, but they managed to meet up two or three times a year for a walk. It was on their most recent ramble that Leo had confided his latest revelation.

I have to tell somebody, he said. It’s burning me up.

Naomi?

"You don’t tell your wife things like this," said Leo.

She might have guessed already.

No, said Leo. I’ve been acting perfectly normal.

That’s always a giveaway, said Terry, trying to lighten the mood. Well, you’d better tell me then.

6

Eric watched Ernie pour the boiling water into the cafetiere. He retained the gnawing sense that cafetieres weren’t for the likes of him. He was from the instant