Book Read Free

All Bones and Lies

Page 12

by Anne Fine


  ‘Yes. If you would, dear.’

  He sank down, hard, on Clarrie’s swivel chair. His heart was thumping. Things were very bad. This was a pretty pass. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he wanted his dead father back. But not the way he’d wanted him in times long past – randomly, utterly, for something as stupid as showing him how to tie a bow tie or start up the lawnmower or choose his first car. No. More to complain. It wasn’t fair that he’d been left to cope with this alone. What use was kindness, purely as a tender memory, to colour daydreams? Surely a bit of grit would have come in more useful. At this rate, the burnished crown he’d let his absent father wear for all these years would tarnish fast. Topping yourself was, after all, a choice. If you’d enough grip left to work your way through some sort of left-handed sheepshank for Dilys, then you could surely hang in one more day. And then another. It was a coward’s trick, to drive yourself into a wall, and cop out for ever. Surely a decent father would have stayed around to give a tip or two about watching your mother go falling to pieces.

  At least the office wasn’t open-plan. Wiping his tears, Colin soothed himself by counting the years on his fingers. Fair’s fair. In all probability the poor sod would have died quite naturally, years before now. And who was to say his parents would have been together still, in any case? These days it wasn’t only sisters who waltzed away, sloughing off responsibility. It was spouses too. Look at Tubs Arnold, often heard in the canteen explaining in quite remarkably embittered detail just how he and Doreen felt each time they had to drive her crippled father past the Silver Age Dance Studio where Doreen’s mother, a.k.a. the Merry Divorcée, was continually reported to be having a grand time.

  And Mel had told him of a family she knew where—

  Oh, God. Mel!

  Flattening his palms on the desk top, he pushed himself to his feet. Important to get on top of things before they got on top of him. First, slip out and buy a toaster. Then go round to Mel’s and explain how some stupid mistake of Tor Grand’s might result in their sending a bit of his mail there. (He’d get to see his Tammy. Could he, perhaps, win back her heart with one of those colourful plastic windmills he’d seen in a bucket outside Woolworths?) Then he’d go round to Mother’s. What else was on his list?

  Oh, Mr Braddle.

  Hastily spinning the torn squares round on the desk, Colin tried to form some kind of sensible message. Was that word warm? This was a Mr, certainly. But since the next letter was an H, not a B, then maybe . . .

  And this looked like see to it . . .

  See to what, for heaven’s sake? Colin couldn’t see to anything else at the moment. Why, he hadn’t even got round to starting on his report on the dead chickens yet.

  No. This bloody Braddle fellow would just have to wait.

  Mel gave his glorious windmill a hostile stare and, in a tone that could not have been more at odds with the sentiment, said, ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, startled. ‘Don’t you think that she’ll like it?’

  Mel looked ready to shove it outside to get stolen. As though unwillingly reminding herself that, like the clothing with which he’d upset her so much last time, this windmill wasn’t quite yet hers to lose, she strutted to the tiny kitchen area and ducked under the sink for one of those glossy rubbish bags his council dispersed in the haunts of the feckless.

  ‘Bung it in this, for God’s sake, before she wakes up and sees it. And don’t for a moment think that you’re leaving the damn thing here.’

  So Tam was napping. Typical of his luck, and a waste of a visit. Frustrated, he handed over the unwelcome gift. ‘But what’s the matter with it?’

  Mel’s temper clearly hadn’t improved since his last visit. ‘You really don’t think, do you, Colin? You’re so bloody wrapped up in your own affairs, it never occurs to you to consider how things affect other people. What am I supposed to do with a windmill? Let her hang out of an unbarred window, waving it? Add it to all the other sodding things I have to carry down four flights of stairs each time we go out? She’s not a baby any more. I can’t just stick the damn thing at the end of her cot and expect her to coo at it.’

  Stupid! And the sheer horror of raising his precious Tammy – any child – in this grim place struck him again. Surely Mel must be able to move out somehow. Anywhere would be better. Where was she before?

  Resisting the urge to apologize for fear of irritating her even more, he made a massive effort. ‘Mel, could I have a cup of coffee?’

  She stared. If ever there were an inauspicious moment to start to assert himself, this must have been it. ‘Don’t you have to get back to the office?’ she asked him, adding with true spite, ‘Since Tammy isn’t up yet.’

  This, he ignored. Trailing her over to the chipped grey cabinet that served for a kitchen, he pursued his objective. No doubt someone handier at conversation could have made a more subtle stab at raising the issue. But he at least did manage to spit it out.

  ‘Mel, where were you living before this?’

  Scrabbling a sight too near the uncovered rubbish bin for his professional ease of mind, she came up with a second mug. ‘Nowhere. Everywhere.’

  Well, fair enough. After a whole two years and more of taking no interest, he had no right to expect a sensible answer.

  ‘It’s all right. I was just wondering. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I wasn’t not answering,’ she snapped. ‘That’s where I was. Nowhere and everywhere. I was with a circus.’

  ‘A circus?’

  Seeing his sheer astonishment must have provoked her because, lifting her arms, she gave him a fast, faultless spin. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  Even through the drab jeans and very nasty woolly, the grace was evident. Had he been blind? She stretched out a hand and held the door behind her open so even in the dim light he saw the poster glowing on the wall: two magical figures, one hanging sinuously from his trapeze, the other in a spin. Everything fell into place – the pointy toes as he swung Tammy in her high-chair, the way she stretched her arms along the wall – even the mad prattle about red cottons made sense to him now. Not cottons. Costumes. Through the half-light he peered at the faded lettering. ‘What does that say? Is it “The Lavenders”?’

  ‘Las Venturas.’

  It was the flatness of her voice that so astonished him. What was it painted on the entrance to that little circus he’d had to cite for illegally drained Portaloos? He’d used it recently in a spell. E pulvere, lux et vis. Could Mel be proof of the reverse? Could that detached manner of hers, that strange, indifferent way of acting as if nothing ever really touched her, simply be evidence that, torn from light and life, even a spinning, shimmering aerial wonder can turn to dust?

  Could she be simply bored?

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Ventura?’ She shrugged. ‘Lots of things. Happiness. Chance. Luck. Risk. It can even mean danger.’

  ‘Is that why you stopped when Tam was born? In case you fe—’

  ‘Please!’

  And he was glad to stifle it, not just because the child might have been half awake, listening; more in the hope of not stirring up further grim visions of the sort that had brought him to her flat in the first place. She spooned the coffee in the dingy mugs while he braved another question. ‘So does he have another partner now?’

  ‘Not like me.’ Spreading her arms as if applause were swelling round her, she dropped in a curtsy. It was, he realized, the first real flash of theatricality he’d ever seen in her. Instantly, another thought struck. ‘Why didn’t you tell them? All those journalists who kept trailing you round asking questions? I read all of those papers. You never said anything – anything at all – about being from a circus.’

  ‘No,’ she said sourly. ‘Well, it’s nobody’s business but mine, really, is it?’

  And he could understand that. If he had had to shelve a life of spangle and excitement to raise a child in this grim place, he wouldn’t fee
d his glittering memories to any callow reporter, trawling for one more ingenious headline about a flying baby.

  Still, she’d said, ‘nobody’s business’. Best to take the hint.

  ‘I really dropped in to warn you a letter’s coming.’ On the way, he’d rehearsed a score of approaches, and all of them sounded stupid. ‘By mistake.’

  ‘Mistake?’

  ‘Yes,’ he ploughed on. ‘It’ll have your name on it, but it’s actually for me. I was in a bit of a spot, you see, and had to think of something quickly.’

  ‘What’s in the letter?’

  At least he could reassure her there. ‘Nothing. Only a bit of rubbish from Tor Grand Insurance Company. You can just shove the whole thing straight in the bin.’

  ‘Anything from Tor Whatsit? Straight in the bin?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And it’ll have my name on it?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he admitted. ‘It’ll be addressed to Mel. Or Melchior.’

  ‘Melchior?’

  Her hoot of disbelief broke straight through Tammy’s dreams. And even as he was leaving, he still assumed it was the child’s fractious wake-up wail that had distracted Mel from the lambasting he expected to follow. (‘How dare you use my name?’ ‘Whatever makes you think—?’) He drove on to his sister’s, to get the clothes he’d salvaged safely off the back seat before driving on to Mother’s. And only as he was pulling to a halt outside her door did it occur to him that Mel was more than capable of soothing Tammy while scolding him.

  No, strange girl that she was, the hoot had been one of simple amusement. And she had not been the slightest bothered that he’d taken advantage of her name and home for a private, and possibly nefarious, purpose.

  Truly, she did come from a different world.

  7

  THE FRIENDSHIP WITH Marjorie clearly wasn’t blossoming. His sister’s relief at seeing him on her doorstep appeared for a moment even to outweigh her pleasure at spotting the sleeve of the Tavernier jacket trailing out of his bundle. And Marjorie, too, gave the impression of having a glint of interest in his arrival, going so far as to take her hand off the top of her tumbler. ‘Well, perhaps a tiny top-up, just to be sociable. But then I really must be pushing off.’

  ‘Not for me, Dil. I’m driving.’

  But either his sister wasn’t listening or the sheer joy of deliverance had made her skittish. ‘No, Col. You must at least let me fetch you a ginger ale, if only to thank you.’ She turned back to the heap he’d tipped onto the armchair. ‘The Barolo shoes! And that grey Formani top! I’d forgotten all about them! Colin, you’re a gem.’

  Her warmth in no way spread itself across to the sofa. Marjorie gave him a couple of moments in which to feel particularly uncomfortable, then said, ‘It’s Colin, isn’t it?’ adding in a tone he thought rather more in keeping with an initial police interview, ‘Do please explain how Miss Riley is fortunate enough to end up with all these clothes she’s so obviously been coveting.’

  Miss Riley? Christ! Things must be terminal. The question was, had he himself become a brother since that disastrous evening in the Stemple Street gallery? Desperate for a hint as to how to explain himself, he swivelled round to Dilys. But her attention was still on the treasures he had brought. Clearly, he’d have to work out for himself if this grim stiffness on Miss Whatsit’s part was simply part of her firm rebuttal of further social advances from someone lowlier in the bank, or early curtain-down on some previously burgeoning friendship during which she might well have picked up the fact that he was Dilys’s brother.

  ‘Well, it was just a bit of a clear-out, really . . .’ was all he ended up daring to mutter. At times like these, his sister’s habitual failure even to make the first gesture towards fetching the drinks she so airily offered could prove a real blessing. ‘Well, I think I’ll be off now.’

  ‘Back to the family?’

  Now he was skewered. Was this some fanciful detail from a new Colin Dilys had invented? Or simply the assumption that he was the husband of a friend. (‘If you’re driving past Dilys’s, could you just drop off that bundle of clothes on the chair by the dresser?’) How should he play it? Best – safer – not to lie outright. Perhaps some bland remark along the lines of some people thinking a clothes cupboard all the better for a regular weed-out would smack of that wifely shadow he usually found himself invoking only with shoddy workmen. (‘Well, personally, of course, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed it’s not quite flush along the edge. But what it looks like won’t be up to me . . .’) Was this the moment to resurrect this pitiless imaginary judge of plumbing shortcuts and worktop surfaces out of true?

  But Dilys put paid to that one. ‘Colin? A wife and kiddies? That’ll be the day.’

  It was dropped like the bombshell it was supposed to be: ‘Not according to Perdita Moran.’

  It was that bloody ‘wife and child’ he’d claimed, come back to haunt him! He waited for his sister’s foot to freeze halfway to the Barolo shoe as, satisfied, Marjorie leaned back against the sofa. Even her prim knees seemed to relax a little, and her forbidding look mellowed to some smug, churchy version of ‘duty done’. She was happy now. Clearly his unheralded arrival had offered this stolid, disapproving woman the chance, in the guise of a bit of leaden, if supposedly innocent, humour, to unburden herself of the very nugget of information that had been making her so uncomfortable. ‘According to our colleague Perdita, your twin here is a bit of a dark horse.’

  A brother, then. And even the same age. It wasn’t clear if Dilys’s snort signalled contempt for Perdita for betraying this particular secret, or scorn for the notion of Colin having secrets of his own. But Marjorie read it as indifference, and leaned forward earnestly. ‘No, Dilys, really. Do listen. It seems your brother has been keeping one or two really very important matters from those around him.’

  Rude bloody woman, he thought, speaking as if he were dead or unconscious. And how dare his sister keep paying more attention to a pair of shoes than to the idea that he might be leading a double life?

  Marjorie tried again. ‘Dilys—’

  His sister finally dragged her attention back from the ill-fitting Italian courts. ‘Oh, I think we all know how seriously to take anything Perdita tells us.’

  Stung, Marjorie reverted to her churchy look. ‘I must say, your mother wasn’t quite so quick to dismiss the idea.’

  ‘According to Perdita.’

  ‘No, no. It was your mother who said as much.’

  Dilys was baffled. ‘You’ve never met my mother.’

  Our mother, Colin felt like butting in. Excuse me. Our mother.

  Marjorie’s colour rose. And though, all his life, Colin had tended to sympathize with anyone caught in the sights of his sister, on this particular occasion he found his heart stone. Marjorie deserved to feel uncomfortable. The priggish bag. Happy enough to embarrass him with her overdelicate insistence on passing on gossip in front of people rather than behind their backs. But this sensitivity clearly hadn’t been matched by any equally fine impulse to lay bare a compromising little detail about her own life. Relief at ridding herself of a disquieting confidence was ebbing fast. Her cheeks burned through their powder glaze. ‘Surely I must have mentioned that I met your mother.’

  Dil’s tone was glacial. ‘No. You never did.’

  ‘Really? Well, it was very briefly. After that gallery opening. We ended up sharing the back seat of the car when Perdita picked up her mother from Canasta Club.’ Paddling away from her own guilt, she steered the conversation back towards Colin’s by turning to tell him, ‘Do you know, your mother believes you’re capable of keeping secrets from your own reflection.’

  At least she’d finally had the courtesy to draw him into this assassination of his own character. He was about to speak when Dilys overrode him. ‘Of course she doesn’t think that. Mother’s simply out to make mischief. Or pass the time cashing in on some of Perdita’s.’

  ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say
about your own mother.’

  Colin waited for Dilys to point out that it was nowhere near as unpleasant as what Marjorie had just been saying about him. But Dilys didn’t bother. ‘Mother isn’t very nice.’

  ‘Personally, I found her charming.’

  ‘Then she must have been clutching a fistful of winnings.’

  Again Colin sensed in Marjorie that sudden upsurge of confidence that stemmed from feeling righteous. ‘But what a horrid shock! To learn from the daughter of a friend that your own son’s been hiding a wife and child.’

  His sister burst out laughing. ‘Colin? A wife and child?’

  ‘No, really, Dilys. It isn’t funny. To find out from a young woman who’s simply offered you a lift home that you’ve been a grandmother for some time!’

  ‘A grandmother? Do me a favour! Colin here couldn’t blow a kiss over a hedge at a blind girl, let alone sneak away and get married. The whole idea’s ridiculous. Utter tosh.’

  Should he, he wondered, standing there scraping his feet on the fringe of the carpet, be trying to feel gratitude towards this brash sister of his for being so cast-iron certain she couldn’t be hearing anything but nonsense? How could she be so sure he hadn’t changed? Maybe in childhood he had been capable only of ‘Colling it up’ when he took to deception. But people’s lives could alter. Look at Mel. Nobody ends up on the high trapeze after a six-week course. She must have trained for years and years to get on that poster. She’d made air her resting place, kept danger as her closest friend and thrilled a thousand upturned faces twice a day. She’d had a job that weaved her fragile, intimate, celestial magic into the bread and butter on her table.

  Then she’d stepped down to earth to live the drabbest life he could imagine. But had he disbelieved her, half an hour ago, when she’d spun round for him? No, he had not. He’d known the truth of it: people could change. So he was furious with his sister, whose confidence that he was just the same old Colin she’d always known felt, not like supportiveness, but like contempt. How could she be so bloody sure he couldn’t possibly have got a life?

 

‹ Prev