All Bones and Lies

by Anne Fine

  He dumped his on the doorstep and, scraping the last of the chicken bones off his boots onto her lobelias, went for revenge. ‘Have you thought any more about replacing that cable?’

  ‘If you’ve come to torment me, then you can turn straight round and go back to your rats and your rubbish.’

  ‘I was just passing by.’

  ‘Go on, then. Do that.’

  Honours now even, he felt free to ask, ‘Well, aren’t you even going to give me a cup of tea?’

  She looked a bit shifty. Then, ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But since you’re in those workboots, could you just take a peek at that dratted drain?’

  It was the conciliatory tone that made him suspicious. He set off back down the path, but the moment he sensed she’d vanished he turned and kicked off his council footwear. Chasing her silently across the stone hall into the kitchen, he caught her clearing the table of a huge swathe of paperwork.

  ‘So,’ he confronted her sternly. ‘What’s all this?’

  The look she gave him would have cracked a stone. ‘None of your business, Mr Nosy Parker.’

  But he had read the words Tor Grand Insurance upside down. ‘You’re never switching companies again.’

  ‘I’ll do what I like,’ she said, disappearing into the larder with her arms full of papers.

  ‘But there’s no point,’ he wailed after her. ‘Wherever one lot goes on this sort of safety certificate business, the others always end up following.’ Though he was speaking to the larder door, he still kept on. ‘You’ll change, then, in a month or so, exactly the same thing will happen. You’ll get another letter.’ Out she came, glowering horribly. But he was determined to finish. ‘You might just as well give in now and let Mr Herbert’s men do their worst and give you your signed piece of paper.’

  She started the tuneless hum that meant, ‘Don’t for a moment think I might be listening.’ Should he play one last dirty card and remind her that Dilys now worked for the great octopus of Tor? No. Simply couldn’t face it. Turning to Floss, he said, exasperated, ‘Walkies?’ But she just spread her body flatter on the floor. Even more irritated, he strode back across the hall and snatched up his umbrella holder. ‘I’ll put this in the dustbin.’ Out of sheer spite, on his way down the side path he reached up to give the windchimes a hefty smack and set the war between his mother and next door straight back on track before diving in the woodshed. There, he rammed home the bolt his father had had the foresight to switch from the outside to the inside, and, in search of distraction and comfort, reached under the chisels. But before he’d even managed to give his sweet bouncing girl a fighting chance to soothe his spirits, he’d realized that it wouldn’t work. He was too rattled. And anyway, the added guilt of seeing Suzie in work hours always made things so much more difficult. It wasn’t worth the candle.

  Candle . . .

  Time for a spell. Lifting the old varnished box out from its hiding place behind the ancient mangle, he sifted through. What did he need? A few of the pretty things, more for their comfort than their efficacy. The spiral stone, perhaps. The chipped medallion. A handful of shells. And the beetles, all three of them, glossy, black and perfect, and, for all he knew, dead for a thousand years before he’d found them in that hollow stone down by the quarry. He wrote his incantation backwards with the silver-tipped pen from the spine of his father’s last diary, repeating it over and over under his breath as he shoved the torn scraps of paper deep in the twisty shell. Setting the candle in the very centre of everything, he spread his hands and began as usual: ‘Something from inside, something from outside . . .’ In moments the spell took off, the sheer word-spinning command of it startling that tiny part of him he’d had to leave alert for calls or for footsteps. When else had everything ever spun along so well? No words said wrongly, no charm water spilled, no candles tipping over. When else had that silent, watching custodian out of self had such a strong sense that, with a bit of luck, this time, this time . . .

  So what went wrong? Was it the rustle in the ivy outside? That, after all, could have been Floss, nosing around in repentance. Or the way that the candlelight swam in the shadows? Perhaps, he thought after, it was simply the nastiness of what he was wishing another poor soul on the planet that made him, at the very last – and he could sense it, it was about to be the perfect spell – lose his nerve utterly, and let that shadow vigilant who watched for danger break in to stop things in their tracks, and twist the force of magic round.

  ‘Blimey!’

  This echo of his sister brought Tammy instantly to mind. And he felt shame. How could he go and shuffle in Mel’s doorway, holding the indispensable bag of fruit and this week’s excuse, the lovely bright alphabet letters, when scarcely an hour before he’d been hunched over a trestle top, playing at wizards? What on earth was the matter with him? Raw with the sense of his own lack of dignity, he raised the candle to the twisty shell and punished himself with its heat on his fingers. The spell words floated down, spluttering ashes, and, still disquieted, he stirred the mess into his father’s work bench. Had it been haste? Or panic? Hard to tell. But still it had been a very strange thing to end up wishing his mother.

  Light and Life.

  Still in his socks, he took the opportunity to climb in the larder window and examine the paperwork she’d stuffed in the breadbin. You had to hand it to her generation, he decided; they’d had a proper education. None of the botch-alike Clarries in the office could have made nearly so good a job of jotting notes on the application forms he found himself holding. At the bottom of Prudent Secure’s notes, she’d summarized: ‘practices in review’. (Clarrie would have spelt it ‘practises’.) On Heft Insurance, ‘nothing definite – changes in pipeline – girl very shifty’. And on good old Tor Grand’s, it was ‘no plans at present – but no guarantee’. Inspecting the envelopes, he noticed with interest that she’d been more efficient than Clarrie ever would at getting the forms sent to her first class. Even playing the Old Lady card, that was impressive.

  She’d only filled in one. Tor Grand. He ran his eyes over the printed name that, in as much as it mirrored his own, still echoed of catcalls down drab school corridors. He almost heard the snort she’d have given as her pen sailed over the contemptible Ms to circle the full-bodied Mrs. He read the old address that still, at heart, he felt belonged to him as well. If there had been a section labelled Medical, he probably would have read that too, but Tor Grand’s only interest was in the house: its age, its size, proximity to the neighbours. On it went, all filled in perfectly, over the page to details of claims under previous dispensations, where she gave the lie to his fears of her gathering vagueness by recalling some pre-neolithic disaster with the boiler. Here, in fact, was the ideal application form. No sections hopelessly left blank. No crossings-out. No claggy contoured heaps of whitener over which the poorly schooled likes of Clarrie hauled their pens time and again, leaving errors like spoor. If only all those halfwits in Personnel – whoops! ‘Human Resources’ – had had the sense to let department heads like his own recruit from the elderly, then his out-tray would be empty now, not threatening avalanche.

  And then he saw it, nestling so innocently amongst the Have You Evers: Have special conditions of any sort, or any form of specific certification, ever been requested in respect of insurance for this property?

  She’d answered, No.

  No need to panic. Maybe she wouldn’t even send the application in. After all, unless Frampton Commercial shared her first company’s easy-going attitude towards the refund, she might decide she’d prefer to get the cable entry done.

  Then, fat chance, he told himself, and sank, exhausted, on the breadbin. Ranked jars of pickled onions eyed him mournfully. What should he do? Carry on battling? Or simply let the whole thing go, and pray that, out of the gamut of ills a house was heir to, it was a jet plane through the roof that got it first. Anything else would almost certainly provoke the usual suspicious investigation of a Johnny-come-lately. One routine phone
call to the last insurer and, sure as he never saw a banker on a bike, her claim would come back stamped ‘Invalid’.

  So it was into battle. Christ! Old people were exhausting. Look at him. This visit alone he’d played four roles already – recycler, spurned benefactor, sorcerer, spy. And now he had to turn insurance adviser yet again. Sighing, he slid the application form back in its envelope and dropped it into its hiding place, along with the others. Then he climbed out of the window, and, slapping the windchimes again purely for the hell of it, walked in to accuse her of concealment and criminal misrepresentation.

  She slipped her own attack in first. ‘You’ve got a ghost up every sleeve. Where have you been?’

  He lost his nerve. ‘I was just looking for a bradawl in the woodshed.’

  ‘Don’t you go stealing my tools, or I’ll soon have your name crossed off my Christmas card list.’

  He took the tray she was carrying, and though she hardly went up the stairs like a spring lamb, he could tell she was finding it harder and harder to pretend she was limping. ‘Is your leg better?’ he asked, with deep suspicion. Affecting not to hear him, she fought back. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel limp as a piece of chewed string.’ He plunged in as close to the business worrying him as he dared. ‘Listen,’ he lied. ‘I don’t know what all those papers lying on the table were, but really, you’d be mad to switch companies a second time and have to go through this whole performance again in a few months.’ He laid his precious September fortnight on the line. ‘I could take time off work and be around while Mr Herbert’s men are doing it.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t you be everybody’s star attraction!’

  ‘I could make sure—’

  ‘No. Why should I suffer a boiling of mess and noise just so your bum’s on plush after the will’s read?’

  ‘This has nothing to do with the property’s value. It’s to do with insuring it.’

  ‘I think that’s my business.’

  ‘You won’t be so quick to say that when your insurance company refuses to cough up because you never mentioned any special condition.’ Ignoring her look of suspicion, he waggled his finger. ‘Because that’s what your being asked to get this electrical safety thing is, you know. A special condition. And you won’t be able to pretend to Tor Grand that you didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘I see you’ve been snooping through my post again.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Tor Grand?’

  Rumbled.

  He spread his hands. ‘Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? Leave you to make decisions as daft as this? You won’t be so happy for me to leave you to it when you’re standing in a heap of charred rubble and Tor Grand won’t pay you!’

  ‘You’ve put in your twopennyworth. Don’t think for a moment I’ll expect any help from you.’

  To hide his flush of vexation, he bent his head over the teapot. This daft refusal to be sensible. This stubborn rudeness. How did the rest of the world steer their way round it without feeling homicidal? When old people acted like this, it wasn’t even normal life slid into reverse, but something much uglier. Kids on the wasteground next to Mel turned a deaf ear to everything said to them, but all they seemed to want was not to have to call a halt to whichever anti-social game it was they were enjoying. This was more personal and to do with power. ‘All right,’ she might as well have said out loud. ‘So my world’s closing in. I can’t make sense of that new electronic timer on the water heater. I’m scared to take a car out. And I could no more haul that great heavy old wheelbarrow out of the shed again than cycle to Guadalajara. But there’s one thing I still can do. I can still watch you having to gnash your teeth as I do everything my way. And I shall.’

  Small wonder granny-bashing was so popular. But even wimps like him could put their fists up in their own weak way. ‘I’d no idea you were so confident you had so many other good friends around, ready to offer help in emergencies. Perhaps you’d ask one of them to take the mower for its annual service. And another to fix that hinge on the shutter that you say has been annoying you.’

  ‘If doing me one or two tiny favours is such a trial, I’d rather be six feet under.’

  ‘Sadly, it’s not that easy to fold yourself up neatly and disappear,’ he said, regretting the words instantly, since it manifestly was. Look at his father. One last kind, wordless pat on Colin’s head, one last attempt to show Dil how to tie a proper sheepshank, and he’d slid out the door, never to return – except as a gentle ghost striding through Colin’s rich imaginary life, and an occasional dizzying vision of a horizontally revolving skeleton. ‘You realize your father would be turning in his grave if—’

  He risked a glance to see if his sharp response had triggered dread memory. But she was busy mumbling. ‘Lord knows, I didn’t expect the rainbow trail to stretch all the way to the horizon. But if I’d had the faintest idea what a cindery path I was going to be asked to tread, I would have wished to have been gathered into glory’s arms a long, long while ago.’

  He nearly retorted, ‘Well, don’t for a moment think you’d have been wishing it alone!’ Then, fighting the very same surge of self-pity he’d just been despising in her, it struck him that it couldn’t only be the two of them. Out there, there must be thousands who shared this feeling. Millions, over the world. After all, just as the last guests at a party never knew when to go, Death never knew when to arrive. Someone, he thought, should have the courage to air this issue properly. On radio, perhaps. Or even telly. A panel discussion, a bit like The Moral Maze, but to soften any unpleasantness they could give the programme’s name a lighter, maybe even a literary, spin. What was the line from that Hardy poem Mrs Hunter forced him to learn as a punishment for horsing about when Talbot pushed his head through that window? ‘Till the Spinner of the Years Said “Now!”’ That might work well. It could be launched at a slot around midnight, when all the real complainers had gone to bed. As it became cult viewing, it would be shifted to a popular hour. Fans would begin to call it Now! for short. There’d have to be at least four panel members. Some would be regulars, others one-off guests. And, as the chairman might say winsomely each week during the introduction, ‘To be a good deal more blunt than the scissors with which Fate finally snips the thread of life,’ they would discuss the stage at which there was really no point any longer. ‘Our panel’s first case this evening is Mr Eric Fanshawe. Mr Fanshawe has been in a wheelchair for eight years now – I’ve got that right, haven’t I, Eric? It is eight? But now the doctor’s put him on such a high dose of steroids that he can no longer – bleh, bleh, bleh.’ At the end of each discussion, there’d be a studio audience vote. Now!? Or, Not Yet!? Nothing would hang on it, of course. But it would give these burgeoning hospital ethical committees food for thought. And, if you added on a national phone-in, you could begin to take the pulse of the country on these matters, and, what with the steadily rising number of elderly, that sort of thing could be ever more useful . . .

  ‘Colin!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Was that a knock?’

  ‘I didn’t hear a thing.’

  Her look gave him to understand that that proved nothing. ‘Go and take a peek.’ Dutifully, he stepped over Flossie and edged closer to the window. ‘My God!’ It was Perdita on the doorstep. She was wearing the smartest of summer suits and clutching flowers, and spangles of sunlight were dancing all over her. ‘Who is it?’ hissed his mother from her chair. He panicked. ‘Elsie.’ ‘That nosy witch? Don’t let her see you.’ But it was too late. Stepping back in a pool of bright sunshine in order to look up and appraise the guttering, Perdita had spotted his shadow.

  ‘Hell-ooo!’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Elsie.’

  ‘Well, now I come to take a closer look . . .’

  ‘Oh, really!’ In her exasperation she made it to the door well before him, and slammed it in his face. Relieved, he crept back to the window. It didn’t
take his mother long to get down the stairs, and Perdita was clearly quite happy inspecting the state of the chimneys. He strained to hear, as voices floated upwards. Perdita’s vague mention of ‘simply passing by . . .’ matched by his mother’s less airy-fairy ‘not really at all convenient . . .’ Perdita’s gushing ‘. . . to thank you for taking the trouble of watching my television programme . . .’ as she tried to hand over the flowers. His mother’s adroit mention of allergies as, fully in practice refusing umbrella holders, she made absolutely no move to accept them. Perdita’s sly sidetrack towards the weather ‘. . . makes one so dry . . .’ that was greeted with a silence like nerve gas. Oh, how he admired his mother! He’d have been grovelling round the kitchen by now, offering their unwelcome visitor a choice of beverage.

  And then, the clincher. Perdita’s reference to ‘a little chat’, and Norah, the sunlight beating on her scalp, murmuring, ‘Perhaps another time, when the weather’s better . . .’ By the time she came back, he was ready to hug her. But she was spitting poison. ‘The cheek of it! Up my path, bold as a crab. The little hussy needn’t think there’s any point sweeping my doorstep with her eyelashes.’

  ‘Who was it?’ he asked, keen, this time, to do a much better job of allaying suspicion.

  ‘How should I know? Some woman with a bucketful of hair trying to dredge up viewers for her telly programme. Really, these people have no sense at all. This house isn’t even on cable.’ He stared. Had she truly not recognized the face in the photograph? Or was she, as usual, working on the principle that knowledge is power, so best not to share? And what about bloody Perdita? Did she really have him logged down for such a feeble opponent she didn’t even give a toss if he was in there, listening, as she started her sales pitch? Or was her greedy head so stuffed with percentages she hadn’t even noticed the huge blue council lettering on the side of his van? His head was spinning. Oh, to be back in the haven of his office, with only Clarrie’s sporadic howls of technologically related anguish and hourly tranches of embittered messages from Lees and Haksars to disturb and unsettle him. Colin peered out of the window – had she gone? was it safe to leave? – just as his mother appeared at his elbow. ‘So who is the pushy little madam pestering now? That black-hearted fiend next door, I hope. With luck, the over-painted little trollop will get her hair caught in his windchimes and fetch the whole noisy boiling down.’