The Beresford

by Will Carver

  ‘I wasn’t sure, because you don’t wear a ring.’ Gail couldn’t help herself. ‘My grandmother kept her wedding ring on her finger for sixteen years after my grandfather passed, so I wasn’t sure. Everyone is different, of course.’

  Mrs May reached into her blouse and pulled out a gold chain looped through a simple gold band.

  ‘I keep it next to my heart, dear. Never take it off.’

  Abe was speechless. He’d never seen Mrs May like this. So sad and sincere.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be, dear. I had a lot longer with him than I was supposed to.’

  Mr May was diagnosed with stage-four bowel cancer and given weeks to live. His wife was distraught. It wasn’t long enough to do all of the things they’d promised one another. It couldn’t be weeks, surely.

  The doctor explained that the couple may get a month together but they should also be prepared that it could happen much sooner than expected. He spoke of palliative care and other things the Mays did not want to entertain, and the doctor’s voice whistled by their ears and into nothingness.

  The Mays had been servants of the Lord for their entire lives. This felt unjust. It felt wrong. It felt like a punishment, not a test of faith. They had prayed every day, for each other, for their community, for distant relatives. They were good people. They helped more than they hurt and they listened more than they preached.

  Mr May was feeling weak. He wasn’t quite ready to give up, but he was done with prayer.

  It didn’t work.

  He wondered how often he had sent out his ‘thoughts and prayers’ and it had meant nothing, made no difference. You think the families of that school shooting felt any different? You think the victims of rioting or suicide bombings would be comforted to know that Mr May was sending out his thoughts and prayers in the direction of the families left behind?

  Mr May lost his faith.

  Mrs May’s grew stronger.

  This was no time for a kneeling-beside-the-bed-at-the-end-of-the-day prayer. That wasn’t going to cut it. This had to be more. It had to be passionate. It had to be a selling-your-soul type of prayer. She had to mean it. She had to make the Lord sit up and listen.

  She got one more year with her husband. One glorious year together when all the experts had told her she would get two more weeks. And since that day, since that sweaty, tear-filled purging, that is how Mrs May has prayed. With vigour. With meaning. With truth.

  She made that deal.

  ‘A year? That’s a miracle. I can’t believe it.’ Mrs May hadn’t told Gail and Abe the entire story but they were shocked all the same. Gail looked as though she was about to cry.

  The old lady nodded, but she didn’t believe in miracles.

  She believed in passion.

  And she believed that she had made it happen.

  ‘You lived here together at The Beresford?’ Abe finally joined in, forking some restaurant-grade Dauphinoise potatoes into his mouth.

  ‘No. I came here straight after and I’ve been here ever since. Never left. Never will.’

  ‘How long has that been?’ Gail was trying to gauge how long Mrs May had been alone, but Abe was more interested in her age.

  ‘Fifty years. A hundred years. Who knows? Time doesn’t really matter. Would anyone like a top-up?’

  Abe happily obliged while Gail held on to her water. She thought about divulging her own secret about the baby after Mrs May had opened herself up so honestly, but it made her feel too vulnerable. And she was worried. She needed a roof over her head now more than ever, and she didn’t want to lose the apartment because she violated some clause in the contract that she hadn’t read through before signing.

  Dessert conversation was lighter. Abe noticed how often Mrs May put her hand to her chest. It was something he had never seen before. If he had, he would have assumed it was something to do with her heart or digestion, but now he knew that she was checking for her wedding ring, maybe even pushing it into her chest.

  Abe made himself a part of the conversation, as though Mrs May being so exposed was somehow comforting to him. He was back to himself, forgetting about Blair and the bones left in his bathroom for long enough to get to the end of the evening.

  He gave both ladies a kiss on the cheek and thanked them for their company. He praised his host’s food, asked whether Gail would like to be walked back and, when she politely declined, he stumbled back to his apartment alone.

  Gail stayed behind for a moment. Clearly inspired by Mrs May’s openness, too, she reciprocated.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Mrs May opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t have the wine tonight. It’s the reason I drank the horrible decaf the other day when Abe helped with my phone. I’m so sorry for not saying but I didn’t know until the day after I got here. I mean, I thought I knew, but I hadn’t done a test, so I did one and then I knew, knew. You know?’

  Mrs May put her hand on the rambling woman’s arm to stop her.

  ‘It’s fine, dear. I take it that the father is…’ She let it hang in the air.

  ‘Yes. It’s him. I can’t tell him.’

  ‘So, you’re definitely…’ Again with the trail-off.

  ‘I am keeping it. Of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Gail explained her worries about breaching contract by introducing what would essentially be a housemate. But again, Mrs May reassured her.

  ‘It won’t be the first baby to be born at The Beresford.’

  ‘Thank you for being so understanding. And thank you again for a wonderful evening. Please could we keep this information between us?’

  ‘Mum’s the word.’ She tapped the side of her nose and winked. Then she disappeared back into her apartment. She cleared the table and placed everything into the dishwasher. Then cleaned down the surfaces in the kitchen. Before dimming the lamps and lighting some candles. She took a wild gulp of red wine from the bottle before refilling her glass, and she prayed for Gail’s baby.

  TWENTY–ONE

  Apple seed, pea, blueberry, raspberry, green olive, Kumquat and lime. Gail had ticked them all off, week by week. Her baby was now the size of a plum. And she was convinced that she was showing.

  She wasn’t, of course. She didn’t even look as though she had eaten a plum. It was still early in the process. She hadn’t even gained any weight. She hadn’t experienced any sickness, either, so a part of her felt as though she was either not getting it right or that she was somehow cheating.

  Gail wanted to feel pregnant. She wanted to feel like a mother. And that wasn’t happening while she was keeping things secret and not experiencing morning sickness or not showing a plum-sized bump at the front.

  So, she decided to tell Abe.

  That would make it more real.

  She was nervous for some reason. It wasn’t like telling Mrs May, she was a woman, she would understand. (It was at that point Gail realised that she had asked her landlady about being married but had never asked whether she had any children of her own.) Abe was different. He was a man. She didn’t want her pregnancy to change their relationship in some way.

  There was nothing romantic between Gail and Abe, but they had been spending time together. She was not giving off any signals – she had been very careful about that – because she was not interested in being with anyone after her previous relationship. (At that moment, Gail began to wonder about the sex of her child. It would be wonderful to have a girl, a little version of her. But better. It could just be the two of them and that would be enough. But a boy would be wonderful. She could raise him to be the man who would treat a woman how they should be treated. He would respect his mother and all women. He would never raise his voice or his hand. He would never know his father, he would never need him.)

  There was music playing from Abe’s apartment. The guitar sound was heavy and not to Gail’s liking, but it was a welcome break from the noise th
at leaked through the walls from Mrs May’s place.

  ‘Hi, Gail. Is everything okay?’ He looked paler than usual, or perhaps his eyes were darker.

  ‘Yes, thanks, I just wondered whether you might fancy a walk to grab some coffee. I’ve got a hankering for a cinnamon swirl.’

  ‘Not today. I’m not feeling great, to be honest. Maybe tomorrow?’

  ‘Ah, yeah. Okay. That’s fine. You rest if you’re not feeling well.’

  She looked disheartened.

  ‘Are you sure everything is alright?’

  ‘Well … yeah … I … look, I’ll just come out and say it: I’m pregnant. A few months.’ She rubbed her stomach and immediately felt stupid.

  ‘You’re happy about that?’ It was an odd thing to say but Gail was behaving strangely.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then congratulations.’ He faked a smile. ‘I’m sure I’ll feel better by tomorrow. We can talk properly then, okay?’ He was already shutting the door before she could answer.

  His well wishes had not seemed particularly genuine to Gail and, instead of suddenly blossoming with maternal fervour, everything fell flat around her. But she realised that she hadn’t been lying about that cinnamon hankering. Perhaps she was experiencing cravings, she wasn’t sure when they were supposed to kick in.

  It helped.

  She walked to the coffee shop alone.

  Abe had woken up the day after the meal at Mrs May’s and felt like death. At first, he had assumed a hangover – not talking had left a hell of a lot of time for drinking, and he’d been putting away that Bordeaux like it was grape juice.

  But the afternoon came around and he felt worse. Stomach cramps. Retching. This was no hangover, it was like nothing he had ever encountered.

  And it had been happening on and off, every other week since. This was the sixth time.

  He felt cursed.

  And there was an overwhelming sensation that he should leave, get out of The Beresford. Where had that come from?

  Then Mrs May came over with some leftovers from the party and a soup she had made that morning, which seemed to make him feel even sicker. Every time he is ill, she brings over her magic broth.

  He’d woken up sweating but shivering. The room spun. He could see Sythe and Blair standing at the foot of his bed, both with their arms folded in disappointment, shaking their heads.

  Abe knew he was hallucinating, he’d rid the world of every molecule of his victims, and assumed that it must be food poisoning because he’d eaten some bad chicken once while he still lived with his parents and the same thing had happened. But it couldn’t have been Mrs May’s food because she seemed as sprightly as ever when she dropped off her care package, and Gail was positively glowing in the way that only expectant mothers can. And neither had been sick since.

  It couldn’t be the food.

  He thought about his mother but couldn’t recollect her face.

  That was a long night of searching for Abe. Crippling cramps and never quite throwing up, which was so much worse than actually throwing up because there was no respite.

  The walls were breathing. The ceiling appeared to be lowering to a few inches above his face then raising back up. Lowering. Then raising. The same thing had happened the first time he tried magic truffles on a trip to Amsterdam while still at university.

  Abe shouted at the apparitions to leave him alone, to get out. ‘I know you’re not real. I fucking killed you.’

  They unfolded their arms and looked at one another, then back at Abe, then each other, and they started laughing. A silent laugh. A tormenting laugh.

  Abe sensed the rage he had felt at Blair when she had laughed at him for ejaculating prematurely. But he was too weak this time to attack her with a pair of scissors; he couldn’t even sit up.

  She wasn’t really there.

  Sythe wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t food poisoning.

  It was the house. Playing tricks on him.

  It was The Beresford.

  It wanted him out.

  When we hit our darkest moments, when we are so low and it seems like there is no way out, that is when, in our desperation, we lean towards the fantastical. We turn to aliens or magic or ghosts or, worse, God. Abe didn’t believe in any of that crap. He put it all down to the house. That The Beresford was a living, breathing entity. That it had seen what he had done and was now punishing him.

  Or the man in that bed masquerading as Abe.

  He loved that apartment. He loved living there for almost no money. He even loved old Mrs May in his own peculiar way. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to smoke weed in the garden and read in the limited library and be cooked for by his geriatric landlady. He liked knocking one out in the bathroom where he cut up two of his neighbours while thinking about the woman who was never his girlfriend.

  But he hated the pain and the sweats and the ghosts in his bedroom.

  And he thought, Maybe it is time for something new, to move on.

  The cramps ceased.

  The spectres evaporated.

  And Abe slept.

  TWENTY–TWO

  Gail’s baby was the size of an avocado when she called Blair a bitch. Then another man was trying to hit her.

  Mrs May had emptied Blair’s apartment after ten days of not seeing that kind country girl. She could have searched through all the woman’s belongings to find her parents’ details. She could have let them know that she had moved on from The Beresford and forfeited her small deposit. But that wasn’t how Mrs May did things.

  She would wait. A week, maybe three, and Blair’s God-fearing mother and father would be on that doorstep, demanding to know what had happened to their daughter. They’d look ten years older than they felt, and all three people in the doorway of The Beresford would have the feeling that Blair Conroy would never be seen again.

  Her parents would comfort themselves by saying that she was with God now. And Mrs May would know that she was not.

  Abe still hadn’t moved out but was useful in taking Blair’s things to the local charity shop. Her clothes. Her books. They couldn’t get into her laptop so that was thrown away. It didn’t make sense, of course. Why would she leave without any of her personal possessions?

  Mrs May never asked the questions. She just had to get the room ready for the next tenant.

  Abe and Gail were talking in the library area. She had asked him more about Blair.

  ‘Mrs May said that you two had got close.’

  He admitted that, and then riffed on the truth. Saying how she had led him on. She was showing him affection and then pulling back. Blair was a bit of a user. He would buy her things, and had lent her money.

  ‘I won’t see that again. I think that’s probably what she used to get out of here.’

  Gail, matter-of-factly, just-for-something-to-say, wittered the words, ‘Sounds like a real bitch to me.’

  It was nothing. A throwaway comment to show that she was on Abe’s side.

  ‘What did you call her?’

  ‘A bitch. The Blair Witch. The Blair bitch.’ She laughed at her own joke.

  ‘Are you laughing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t know her. You don’t call her a bitch, you hear me?’

  Abe should have left. He should never have had another opportunity like this. Getting sick had been his missed cue to leave.

  He got up from his chair and stood over the pregnant woman, snarling. She’d seen that look before a hundred times, when Castle wanted his sandwich or to turn her onto her front and fuck her dry.

  Abe was mad.

  He slapped Gail hard around the face.

  He drew his fist back next, and Gail reacted to all the beatings she had taken over the years. She wasn’t going to lie down and wait for a man to stamp on her head. Not again. She had escaped that.

  Another fight at The Beresford.

  It was happening again.

  A minute after it was finished, the doorbe
ll would ring.

  PART THREE

  ONE

  Abe was dead.

  And Gail had sixty seconds before the newest tenant of The Beresford knocked on the front door.

  She didn’t try to hide it, at first, which was something that very few people who murdered somebody at The Beresford did.

  Gail knocked on Mrs May’s door.

  She was crying.

  ‘What’s the matter, dear? Is it the baby?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

  ‘What? What do you mean? What have you done?’

  Gail stepped aside. Mrs May could see along to her beloved library. Abe was lying on the floor.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Abe. No.’ The old lady pushed past Gail, forgetting for a moment that she was pregnant. It was anger and panic, then utter devastation.

  She moved like a much younger version of herself – there wasn’t much time – and was kneeling over Abe within a few seconds. There was a wound on the side of his head, and the smashed vase was on the floor next to where he lay. A large shard of that broken vase was protruding from his left eye. Mrs May could see the marks in his face where it had cut him before being rammed into the left socket.

  She checked quickly for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Breathing.

  Nothing.

  Although Mrs May knew that would be the case because Gail was still alive and it had to be one of them that perished.

  She was talking to herself (or Abe) as she shook her head.

  ‘I prayed for you, boy. I tried to get you out. Couldn’t you see that? You kept getting sick here. You needed to leave. You had to decide. You could have just walked out. Now look at you. Dammit.’ Every word was hissed at him through her teeth.

  Gail appeared. There was not much time left.

  ‘It was self-defence. I swear. He hit me.’

  Mrs May had to act fast.

  ‘That’s not how the law will see it. There’s a piece of porcelain poking out of his eyeball.’