Something to Live For

by Richard Roper

  Here we go, Andrew thought.

  “. . . but he’d actually said if he were to pass away, you know, suddenly and that, he’d want me to have a couple of his things.”

  Andrew was about to explain, as calmly as he could, that anything that made up Eric’s estate needed to remain untouched until everything was clarified, but Peggy got in ahead of him.

  “What was it Mr. Thompson was going to leave you?” she said.

  The man shifted his feet and cleared his throat. “Well, there was his telly, and truth be told he did owe me a little bit of cash too.” He flashed a yellow smile. “To make up for all the drinks I’d bought him over the years, you know.”

  “Funny that,” Peggy said. “His name was Eric White. Not Eric Thompson.”

  The man’s smile vanished.

  “What? Yeah, I know. White. What . . .” He looked at Andrew and spoke to him out of the side of his mouth, as if Peggy wouldn’t be able to hear him. “Why’d she do that, try and trick me, when a man’s just died?”

  “I think you probably know why,” Andrew said quietly.

  The man was suddenly consumed by a hacking cough.

  “Bollocks, you’ve no idea,” he spluttered. “No idea,” he said again, yanking the front door open.

  Andrew and Peggy waited awhile before they went outside. The man had clumped down the steps and was now halfway across the estate, his hands in his jacket pockets. He turned briefly, backpedaling as he looked up and gave the finger. Andrew took off his mask and gloves and Peggy did the same before wiping a sheen of sweat from her forehead.

  “So what did you think of your first property inspection, then?” Andrew said, watching the man disappear around the corner with a final middle finger salute.

  “I think,” Peggy said, “that I need a stiff bloody drink.”

  — CHAPTER 7 —

  Andrew had assumed Peggy was joking even as she marched them into the first pub they came to around the corner from the estate. But then the next thing he knew she’d ordered a pint of Guinness and asked what he was having. He checked his watch. It had only just turned one o’clock.

  “Oh, really? Well, I shouldn’t . . . I’m not . . . um . . . okay then. A lager, I suppose, please.”

  “Pint?” the barman asked.

  “A half,” Andrew said. He suddenly felt like a teenager again. He used to practically hide behind Sally as she’d confidently order them beers in their local. He’d have to hold the pint glass with both hands, like a toddler drinking milk from a bottle.

  Peggy was drumming her fingers on the bar impatiently as the barman waited for her half-full Guinness to settle. She looked ready to jump over and drink straight from the tap.

  Aside from a couple of regulars who looked so gnarled and settled in, it was as if the structural integrity of the building depended on their presence, they were the only ones there. Andrew was still hanging his coat on the back of a chair when Peggy clinked her glass against his on the table and drank three hearty gulps.

  “Christ, that’s better,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m not an alkie,” she added quickly. “This is my first drink in about a month. That was just pretty intense for a first morning’s work. Usually it’s just seeing where the toilets are and forgetting the name of everyone you’re introduced to. Still, better to properly go for it. It’s like getting into cold water, isn’t it? And I’ve got enough holiday memories of slowly inching my way into the sea, like I could somehow trick my body into not realizing what was happening, to know you’ve just got to get it over with.”

  Andrew took a tentative sip of beer. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d had an alcoholic drink, but he was fairly certain it hadn’t been lunchtime on a Wednesday.

  “How often do chancers like that guy turn up and try and scam money?” Peggy said.

  “It’s quite common,” Andrew said. “The stories are usually very similar, though sometimes you get a person with something better prepared, more believable.”

  Peggy wiped some foam off her lip. “I’m not sure what’s worse. Maybe the people who concoct a proper story are the real shits, not that dopey idiot back there.”

  “I think you’re right,” Andrew said. “At least with Eric we’ve got what looks like a next of kin. That usually settles things—stops the chancers trying to get something when there’s family on the scene.”

  One of the locals at the bar began an impressive sneezing fit, entirely ignored by the others dotted around him. He eventually recovered enough to inspect whatever he’d hacked up into a handkerchief with a mixture of surprise and pride before ramming it back up his sleeve.

  “Is it usually blokes who, you know, end up like this?” Peggy said, eyeing the sneezer as if he might be their next case.

  “Nearly always, yes. I’ve only had one woman”—Andrew went red before he could stop himself—“you know, a dead one.” Oh god! “I mean . . .”

  Peggy was trying very hard not to smile. “It’s okay, I know what you mean. You’ve only ever done one house inspection where the deceased was female,” she said, very deliberately.

  “That’s right,” Andrew said. “It was my first inspection, actually.”

  The pub door opened and an elderly couple came in, regulars too, it would seem, judging from the way the barman acknowledged them with a nod and began pouring a pint and a half of bitter without needing to be asked.

  “What was that like, then, your first?” Peggy asked.

  The memory of that day was still very clear in Andrew’s mind. The woman’s name was Grace, and she’d been ninety when she’d died. Her house had been so immaculate it was as if she might have expired as a result of a particularly vigorous clean. Andrew recalled the intense relief he’d felt when he and Keith had entered the house. Maybe it would always be like this: little old ladies who’d had a good innings and passed away in their sleep; savings in a Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle money jar; Brideshead Revisited on VHS; a kindly next-door neighbor doing the weekly shop and replacing lightbulbs.

  That was before he found the note under Grace’s pillow.

  In the event of my death: make sure that evil bitch next door gets nothing. She’ll be after my wedding ring—mark my words!

  He realized Peggy was looking at him expectantly.

  “It was largely fine,” he said, deciding that dropping another grim tale into the mix might not be helpful.

  They sipped their drinks and Andrew realized he should really ask Peggy some questions about herself. But his mind was blank. That was the problem when you spent your entire adult life treating small talk like it was Kryptonite. Luckily, Peggy had that rare quality of making a silence seem comfortable. After a while, she broke it. “So is there nobody at the funerals if we’ve not found a next of kin?”

  “Well,” Andrew said, “and this isn’t strictly part of the job, but if it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to turn up—no neighbors or ex-colleagues or anything—then I go myself.”

  “That’s very good of you. Going above and beyond, like that.”

  “Oh no. Not really,” Andrew said quickly, squirming with embarrassment. “It’s quite common in this job, I think. I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

  “Must be tough, though,” Peggy said. “Are they usually okay—as much as they can be—the funerals? Nothing really distressing’s happened?”

  “Not so much distressing,” Andrew said. “But there are unusual moments.”

  “Like what?” Peggy said, leaning forward slightly.

  Andrew immediately pictured the chair man.

  “A man once turned up with a blue armchair,” he said. “I’d not been able to find any friends or family, so I wasn’t expecting anyone there. It turned out this man—Phillip—had been on holiday when his friend died. He was the one person who was allowed into the guy’s house. The deceased was obsessed with thi
s chair getting somehow damaged, though the color had already begun to fade. Phillip wasn’t sure why he was so attached to it, but he had a feeling his friend’s late wife used to sit there. Phillip eventually persuaded the man to let him take it away and get the color restored, but by the time he’d come to collect it from the repair place after his holiday the man had died. Phillip saw the notice I’d put in the local paper that morning and headed straight to the funeral. He even brought the chair into the church so it was next to us during the service.”

  “Wow,” Peggy said, sitting back. “That’s heartbreaking.”

  “It is, yes,” Andrew said. “But—” He stopped abruptly.

  “What?” Peggy said.

  Andrew cleared his throat.

  “Well, it actually made me determined to keep going to the funerals.”

  “How come?”

  “Oh, well, I’m not exactly sure,” Andrew said. “It just felt like I sort of . . . had to.”

  The truth was that it had made him see that everyone who died alone had their own version of that chair. Some drama or other, no matter how mundane the rest of their existence was. And the idea that they’d not have someone there to be with them at the end, to acknowledge that they’d been a person in the world who’d suffered and loved and all the rest of it—he just couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  Andrew realized he’d been spinning his glass on the table. He stopped and the liquid swirled for a moment before falling into a gentle rotation. When he looked up at Peggy, she seemed to be studying him, as if recalibrating something.

  “Well, what a first morning on the job this has been,” she said.

  Andrew took a big gulp of beer, enjoying the fact that tipping liquid into his face meant the onus on him to talk briefly disappeared.

  “Anyway,” Peggy said, seeming to sense Andrew’s discomfort, “we should talk about something more cheery. Like, who am I going to hate working with in the office?”

  Andrew relaxed slightly. This felt like safer territory. He weighed the question up. If he were being professional about it he’d toe the party line and say that while of course it could be a challenging environment to work in, which meant there was the occasional personality clash, everyone always pulled together in the end. But then again he had just had half a pint of lager at one p.m. on a Wednesday, so sod it.

  “Keith.”

  “Keith?”

  “Keith.”

  “I think I remember him from my interview. He sat in with Cameron. He kept putting his finger in various parts of his body and eating whatever came out when he thought I wasn’t looking.”

  Andrew winced. “Yeah, that’s sort of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his personal hygiene.”

  Still feeling somewhat reckless, Andrew found himself divulging his theory that there was something going on between Keith and Meredith. Peggy shuddered.

  “Sadly, Keith reminds me a bit of this boy I had a dalliance with in my teenage years. He smelled like unwashed PE kit and had long, greasy hair, but I was besotted. And I wish I could say that was because he was incredibly charming and kind, but he was a complete idiot. He was, however, the lead guitarist in a local band, a band I subsequently joined to play maracas in.” Andrew was instantly transported back to his teenage local and watching the first—and last—performance by Sally and (then boyfriend) Spike’s band, Driftwood, where they nervously murdered Joni Mitchell covers in front of an audience of Andrew and twenty empty chairs. Sally had seemed unusually vulnerable that night, Andrew recalled, feeling a rush of affection for his sister.

  “What was your band called?” he said to Peggy.

  She looked at him with an unmistakably mischievous glint in her eye. “Get another round in and I’ll tell you.”

  * * *

  —

  It turns out that if you haven’t had a drink for a long time, two halves of 4 percent lager on an empty stomach will actually have quite a strong effect. Andrew didn’t feel drunk as such, just fuzzy and warm and aware that he would happily punch a puffin if it meant he’d get some crisps.

  As promised, Peggy revealed the name of the band she’d been in (Magic Merv’s Death Banana), and they’d moved on to talking about their previous jobs. Peggy had also been axed from her position in a different part of the council and been shunted across. “I was ‘business support officer for the Access, Inclusion and Participation Team,’” she said, “which was as fun as it sounds.”

  Andrew had been trying to place her accent. He thought it was probably Geordie. Was it rude to ask that question? He rubbed at his eyes. God, this was a bit ridiculous. They should really have gone straight back to the office. Not that he had any desire at all to do so. But two beers, though. Two! At lunchtime! What was he going to do next—throw a television out of a window? Ride a motorbike into a swimming pool?

  Just then the quiet was broken as a group of women bustled in, all talking loudly over each other. Their boisterousness was entirely at odds with the subdued atmosphere, but they didn’t seem at all embarrassed, as Andrew would have been, to be causing any sort of disruption. He got the sense that this was a regular fixture, a midweek tradition, perhaps: the way they all headed for a particular table without deliberation. Why is it that we find traditions comforting? he thought, stifling a belch. He looked at Peggy and was suddenly struck by the promise of asking her this incredibly profound question. Inevitably, it didn’t sound quite so clever when he said it out loud.

  “Hmm,” Peggy said, not looking fazed, to Andrew’s relief. “I suppose it’s probably just because it’s a moment in time where you know exactly what’s about to happen, so there are no nasty surprises waiting for you. I dunno, maybe that’s a bit of a pessimistic way of looking at it.”

  “No, I know what you mean,” Andrew said. He pictured Sally looking at the calendar, realizing it was time for their quarterly call. Maybe there was some solace, some comfort, in the regularity of their interaction. “I suppose it’s about having a balance,” he said. “You need to keep making new traditions, otherwise you start to resent the old ones.”

  Peggy lifted her glass. “I feel like I need to toast that. To new traditions.”

  Andrew looked dumbly at her for a minute before quickly grabbing his glass and knocking it clumsily into hers with an ugly clink.

  There was a collective cooing from the women in the corner. Peggy looked past Andrew’s shoulder at them. After a moment she leaned forward and looked at him conspiratorially. “Be subtle,” she said, “but don’t you just love looking at everyone’s reactions when someone’s talking about getting engaged?”

  Andrew swiveled around.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa—I said subtle!”

  “Sorry.”

  This time, he half turned in his chair and pretended to be inspecting a framed caricature of a drunken cricketer on the wall. He glanced as casually as possible at the group before turning back. “Was there something specific I was supposed to notice?” he said.

  “Look at their smiles. It’s all in the eyes.”

  Andrew was lost.

  “Most of them are genuinely happy for her, but there are at least a couple of them who don’t think this is a good idea,” Peggy said. She went to take a gulp of beer, then decided what she had to say was more important. “Me and my friend Agatha, right, for ages we had this game that whenever we found out someone we knew was getting married and we didn’t really approve we’d guess what their first post-proposal argument would be about.”

  “That’s . . . that’s a bit . . .”

  “Mean? Awful? You betcha. I very much learned my lesson after I got engaged to my fella, Steve. When I saw Agatha I jokingly made her guess what our first fight had been. Unfortunately it backfired in a pretty major way.”

  “How so?”

  “She guessed that it was because Steve had told me he was already having co
ld feet about the whole thing.”

  “And what was it about really?”

  “It was over a badly washed-up spatula.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yep. Turns out she’d never really approved of him at all. But we made up in the end, thankfully. All it took was five years of stubborn silence before bumping into each other, both hammered, in a kebab shop and putting the world to rights. She even bought me a spatula for mine and Steve’s tenth wedding anniversary. Funnily enough, that was the first thing I reached for to chuck at his head the other night when he came back from a two-day bender having ‘just popped out for a quick drink.’ God, life’s weird sometimes.” Peggy let out a hollow laugh and Andrew joined in, unsurely. Peggy took a long gulp of Guinness and landed her glass with a thud. “I mean,” Peggy said, “go out, get wasted, we’ve all been there, right?”

  Thankfully, Andrew judged this to be rhetorical and kept quiet.

  “But just don’t lie about it, you know?”

  “Absolutely,” Andrew said. “That’s the last thing you should do.”

  Peggy sighed. “Sorry, this is stupidly unprofessional of me, banging on about my marital problems.”

  “Not at all, it’s fine,” Andrew said. He suddenly realized what he’d just opened the door to. He could sense the question coming a mile away.

  “You married, yourself?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “So I can’t now not ask you: what was your first post-proposal argument?”

  Andrew thought for a moment. What would it have been? He had the feeling it should be something equally as trivial as Peggy’s.

  “Whose turn it was to take the trash out, I think,” he said.

  “A classic. If only all the arguments were about domestic chores, eh? Anyway . . . just nipping to the loo.”

  For one dreadful second Andrew nearly stood up, too, out of politeness. Calm down, Mr. Knightley, he thought, watching Peggy disappear around a corner in search of the toilets. He looked around, accidentally catching the eye of a man sitting at the bar, who gave him the slightest of nods. Here we are, the look seemed to say. On our own. As usual.