by Anne Fine
‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘I managed to save some of that.’
Tipping Tam off, he stumbled to his feet and led her and her mother back round the corner to point out the box he’d been ferrying about for a couple of days now.
The sharp-eyed Tammy spotted the paw first. ‘Teddy!’ Hurling herself headlong into the boot of his vehicle, she dug for her precious soft toy.
Mel wasn’t far behind. ‘Is that my benefit book? Thank God for that!’ Pushing aside the envelope he’d dumped on top, Mel rooted deeper. ‘Brilliant! You saved the photos!’ She tugged out the poster he’d rolled so carefully. ‘Is this—?’ Unravelling an inch or two, just to be sure, she spun round to hug him – ‘Oh, Colin! You’re a gem!’ – before turning back to her digging. ‘And look! You even thought to save my first ever costume – my absolutely best lucky one. The one I love most in the whole world!’
She fell on the rag he’d taken for some dress-up. He shot out a hand. ‘Careful! I used that to wrap—’
‘Lavender!’ squawked Tammy, spotting her precious glass snowstorm. Fast learner that she was, she scrambled instantly into her car seat and held out her hands, already whispering. By the time he turned back, Mel had spread the glistening red costume against her body and, resting a hand on his wing mirror, lifted a leg to flex an ankle. Only two days away, and yet she looked so different. Had she grown taller? Stretching each foot in turn, she raised her legs both higher and more gracefully than he’d have thought possible. Her skirt fell away, exposing all too much leg for Colin, who dragged her attention back by flapping the envelope.
Mel tilted her head in the middle of a leg bend to glance at the sender’s name, richly embossed in steel-grey letters across the top. ‘Taw, Grant and Sorlence? Fine. Toss it out.’
All of the bureaucrat in him came to the fore. ‘You have to read it, Mel,’ he told her sternly. ‘This isn’t simply junk mail. I had to sign for it.’
‘I like that! You were the one who told me I was to throw them away without bothering to read them.’
He stared at her. ‘Sorry?’
She was far too absorbed in her stretching to notice his face. ‘And a bloody good thing, too, or I’d be knee-deep in them. This must be the fourth, at least.’ She took a moment from arching gracefully over backwards to chortle, ‘Though none of them have been addressed to Melchior.’
‘Melchior?’
The penny dropped.
‘Not Taw, Grant and Sorlence, Mel! Tor Grand Insurance!’
Can someone bending like a lily shrug?
‘Mel. Read it. Now. It might well be important.’
She raised her leg so high, his heart thumped. ‘But they still sound like bailiffs or solicitors or something. And I’ve had quite enough bad news today. If you’re so bothered, you read it.’
Bothered, he certainly was. What madness had come over him, to give instructions to someone so careless to toss post of any description away? What had he brought down on their heads? Imminent arrest for a failure to show up for jury service? A final summons for that gas fire?
Ripping open the envelope, he flattened the contents on his car roof and, ignoring her leg-lifts, began on the letter.
‘Mel, I do think you really ought to listen to this. Mel—’
It was like trying to talk to human origami. Each time he glanced at her, she was a different shape. Who would have thought a body could slide with such ease from swallow to shepherd’s crook, from sickle to gazelle?
‘Mel, really. I was right. This is important.’
Now she was spinning like a top.
‘Mel, stop that! Please! This matters. It’s a letter to Tamina Poppy—’
‘Who can’t even read!’
‘That’s not the point. These people want to give her something.’
Now she was spinning the other way. ‘She could do with a new roof over her head. We both could. That’s what you ought to be thinking about, Colin. Not—’
In his excitement, he had interrupted her. ‘. . . in the absence of any indication of the invalidity of . . . and pending further and thorough investigation . . .’
She was back on her body bends, resting each leg in turn on his car wing and stretching along it. ‘It doesn’t sound as if they want to give Tam anything. I’d say the bits you’re reading out sound rather nasty.’
What were those raw red patches? Hastily, he looked away.
‘That doesn’t mean a thing. Frampton Commercial send round a circular that manages to make their annual fire extinguisher inspections sound like a favour. The fact remains’ – he worked his way down through the dense unpleasantness of formal language – ‘I’m almost sure these people want to give Tam money.’
‘Oh, yes? How much?’
His eyes fell on the sum. ‘My Christ! I don’t believe it!’
Mel froze in the middle of a back bend.
‘It’s all In Trust,’ he told her hastily. ‘Until Tam’s twenty-one.’
Mel snorted. ‘Twenty-one!’ Clearly the notion that this small creature in the car seat still cheerfully gabbling away to a tiny plastic girl in a glass ball might ever reach school age, let alone adulthood, was, to her, almost entirely unimaginable, and made the whole boiling seem even more fanciful. ‘And what does “In Trust” mean?’
‘That you can’t spend it. Only the bits you’d need to send her to a good school and buy her uniform and—’
Losing interest at once, she went back to her stretching. ‘I don’t believe it anyway. It’s all some stupid mistake. We don’t know anybody who has any money – certainly not enough to hire some posh lot like this to dish it out. And if it really was us they meant, they’d be writing to me, wouldn’t they? Not to Miss T. P. Gould who’s only three.’
He wasn’t listening for, in his mystification, he’d flicked over the page yet again to notice, this time, clipped to the back, a flimsy half sheet of handwriting beached in a sea of darkly speckled paper. It spoke of copies of copies, and was presumably part of a letter, trimmed to excise bits deemed irrelevant to Miss T. P. There were only a couple of paragraphs, and even these were written in a hand so crabbed and shaky they were hard to decipher. But some parts were clear:
‘. . . time of great grief and sorrow . . . learn who your true friends are . . . the only two people in the world to bother to sign my dear late husband’s Book of Condolence . . . this thoughtful tribute to my beloved George Henry . . . moved to the quick . . . revoke all previous codicils . . . this little bequest . . .’
Little?
He wasn’t going to tell her now. They hadn’t time – not till he’d visited Mother. Still, he couldn’t help but mutter over the sharp little intakes of breath born of her stretchings. ‘Not that bloody little!’
She wasn’t listening. ‘So who is this old bag who was so fond of her dear hubby?’
He flipped back to read Taw, Grant & Sorlence’s letter reference aloud. ‘Estate of the late Florence May Besterton.’
Clearly her lack of curiosity about the money stemmed not from indifference but from disbelief. ‘See? A mistake. I don’t know anyone called Florence Whatsit.’
‘Get in the car,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll take you round to my place. You can stay there at least till I find out where they’ve rehoused you.’
She bent, just like a lily, one last time. And, as the breeze lifted the blouse from the back of her neck, he saw the bright raw graze. ‘Mel! Have you been back on the trapeze?’
‘Just making sure I could still—’
Wincing, he broke in on all her chatter about pikes, and back balances, and something distressingly referred to as ‘skinning the cat’. ‘Mel! For one thing it’s dangerous. Especially if you’re out of practice. And for another, you’re a mother now. With serious responsibilities. You simply can’t—’
‘Oh, do shut up, Col.’
At least his fussing had driven her into the car. He turned to strap in Tam. Before they’d reached Mount Oval, Mel had abandoned her sulk and was
rattling on cheerfully about the train ride and the look on Alexi’s face when he slid down the rope at the end of his practice set, practically into her arms. She was still telling him all about the welcome in the caravans, and the parties that followed, when Tam started squawking about sweeties ‘for Lavender!’.
‘Oh, God!’
Unbuckling her safety belt, Mel turned and draped the top half of her body over the back of her seat to reach for the lemon drops Colin’s speedy skirting of Mount Oval had sent skidding out of the child’s reach.
‘There! Happy?’
She twisted back and buckled up again, still filling him in on things about which he hoped he’d never have to hear again: corde lisse, and roll-ups, and something she kept vertiginously referring to as the one-toe cross-over hang. But not before he’d spotted the angry red rope burn right across the very top of her leg. And the look of pure triumph that had utterly transformed her.
Absorbed as he was in the sight of the flames roaring upwards, he still noticed the police undercover agent taking his photo.
‘Problem?’ he asked her, proffering his card.
The woman looked shifty. ‘It’s just that you seem to have been to an awful lot of fires this morning.’
‘Statutory duty,’ lied Colin. ‘Toxins pouring forth, and such. I’m afraid my department had been getting rather slack over the past few months and years. But a new government directive came round recently, so we’ve been trying to pull our socks up.’
God! Was this him? From barely articulate, he’d turned into as glib a liar as a poorly paid salesman on a used car lot forecourt.
‘Still, three in one morning . . .’ She shook her head and said, a trifle sarcastically, ‘You’ll be quite the world’s expert now. Any idea how this one got started?’
‘None at all, I’m afraid.’
‘Know anyone who lives here?’
‘Me.’
‘Really?’
Embarrassed, she slid off. He watched a shower of sparks fly from his bathroom window. What could that be? His aftershave exploding? He was losing the whole lot. Anything he cared about? Not really, no. Guiltily his thoughts crept upwards, like the flames, to Mrs Singer’s cosy flat above. She had been dazed and weeping as she’d been helped past. But, on the other hand, for some years now that very pleasant daughter-in-law of hers had been saying she’d be far better off in some form of sheltered accommodation. So maybe, even for Mrs Singer, this fire was a blessing in disguise. After all—
No! he recanted, remembering Val pointing out how very easily people managed to assure themselves that whatever suits them will suit the elderly. Like ghouls, she’d said, itching to nail down the coffin lids on the still undead. ‘This car of yours is really just cluttering up the garage now, isn’t it, Grandpa? Would you like me to—?’ ‘Bit hard to garden all this lot now you’re on your own, isn’t it, Doris? Would it help to sell me and Linda just enough of a strip at the back to build a—?’ ‘Mum, don’t you ever worry about burglars spotting these valuable old pieces through the window? Would you feel a bit safer if—?’
The police nark was back at his elbow now. ‘Have a quick word?’
He turned to see if Mel or Tam were getting restless. But Tam was still dead to the world in her comfy new car seat, and Mel was back to doing her ballerinery bits and bobs with her hand on his car wing.
Still. Three fires in one day. The sooner he was away from here, the better.
‘I really should be getting along. My mother’s coming out of hospital today, and—’
She brushed off her fleeting pretence of taking an interest. ‘Young Jamie over there was just saying you’d been having a few run-ins recently with some fellow called Hacksaw.’
‘Haksar,’ corrected Colin. He gazed, entranced, as, in a spilling, shimmering haze of colours, the inner floors fell. ‘No. I’m quite certain that’s all settled now.’
And bloody well ought to be. Haksar had done a good job. Everything he owned was gone. His sterile flat. His squeaky-clean appliances. The pictures he had never even glanced at. Odd bits of pottery abandoned by Helen. One or two personal documents a man of the desk like himself could get replaced in no time. And, most miraculous of all, the ghastly family sideboard his mother had decided she couldn’t stand but wouldn’t sell. ‘I can’t bear looking at it. You take it, Colin.’
All gone. All burned to ashes, unsought, undeserved. The last dregs of his boring life.
And, in his hands, the generous wherewithal to start another.
Nodding apologies, Colin turned back to his car, carrying only the envelope that the courier, bewitched by the sight that presented itself as he turned the last corner, had finally thought to tug from his saddle-pack, and, after a bit of discussion with the other onlookers, most of whom were neighbours, put in the hands of Colin Aloysius Riley, Esq.
Tracked down at last.
The minute he’d tipped the still-sleeping Tam out of his arms onto the sofa, his sister signalled him to follow her into the kitchen.
‘For God’s sake, Col! I’m having someone round. Is there absolutely nowhere else you could think of leaving them?’
‘Like where, for instance?’
‘Well, your place, for starters.’
‘I only just finished telling you. It’s burned down.’
‘I thought you said that was her place.’
‘Yes, it was. First hers, then mine.’
‘This is insane. Why can’t you drop her off at some hotel? Or Holly House?’
‘Oh, yes? Fetch Mother out of hospital to meet a stranger and a bouncy child?’ He gave a shudder.
‘Well, it’s no more convenient for me.’
Edging past him, his sister made one small concession to hospitality by peering back through the doorway to check Mel wasn’t listening. He saw her eyes widen. ‘What on earth is she doing?’
He didn’t even bother to look. ‘Practising.’
‘Practising what?’
‘Her high-trapeze stuff.’
‘Really?’ Clearly, the romance of the circus had never seeped through to his sister’s soul. ‘Well, she can’t stay here. I don’t think Tara would get on with her at all.’
‘What sort of person can’t get on for one evening with a mother and child who’ve just been made homeless?’
‘Someone like Tara. She’s one of the top-flight solicitors from our insurance arm.’
‘From Tor Grand?’ His sister’s stunningly selfish lack of interest in the fires made him bite back. ‘Then I doubt that she’ll come. She’ll be far too busy sorting out this Chatterton Court mess.’
Though she was almost through the door, she stopped. ‘Which Chatterton Court mess?’
‘You know. The Special Promotion. A month’s free contents insurance.’
‘No, no. Perdita has already been carpeted for that.’ His sister snorted. ‘As if it wasn’t absolutely typical of her arrogance, to walk into a new department in the morning and take it upon herself to turn a simple intra-office design and marketing exercise into a full-bodied outside mailing without even checking with anyone above her.’
He stared. ‘You mean they weren’t even supposed to be posted.’
‘God, no! And Tara heard Marjorie saying that if there should actually be a fire—’
‘Which there has been.’
‘A fire?’
‘I told you. I kept telling you.’
‘I thought you told me that was your place.’
Would they go round in circles all afternoon? ‘And so it was. Hers first’ – best leave out Mother’s for the moment, so as not to confuse things – ‘and mine straight after.’
‘Chatterton Court. Gone up in flames?’ He’d never seen a person’s mood change quite so fast. You’d think he’d waved a wand to turn her from ratty to radiant. ‘The whole lot? Are you serious? You never told me.’
He felt like Clarrie. ‘I like that! I’ve been telling you for the past ten minutes.’
His sister was
ecstatic. ‘Well, isn’t that bloody Perdita in the soup?’ He hadn’t seen her so enchanted since the first time her trick of stringing dental floss between the magnolia and the laurel fetched him off his bike into the lupins.
A moment’s thought and her smile became even more radiant. ‘And this is going to cause a heap of shit to fall on Marjorie as well! In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if—’
Snatching the tray from him, she rushed from the kitchen to fall on Mel just like a proper hostess. ‘Is tea all right? I’d be delighted to fix you a drink, if that’s what you need more after all your horrors. Though we will be drinking later, when my guest comes. I hope you don’t mind. You’re terribly welcome.’
Her eye fell on Mel’s grubby and travelworn clothing.
‘Though perhaps you’d be happier tucked away with the telly. You think about it. But, right now, you must tell me exactly when you last had a bite to eat. There’s supper coming. But right now I could offer soup. Or a sandwich. And, while I’m getting it, you must come through with me into the kitchen to tell me all about this dreadful, dreadful fire . . .’
She was still chuntering merrily when he left.
A pity his mother hadn’t thought to close the larder window before embarking on her pestilent chicken supper. Smuts had flown in with the smoke and left dark splatters over everything. Should he toss all the food out, or could he simply wipe down jars and packets? Tugging things out one by one, he caught sight of something tiny and still and black behind the semolina. Talk about shoemakers’ children being the worst shod. Could this all-too-large speck be the corpse of a cockroach in his own mother’s pantry?
So hard to see. The smoke-filmed lightbulb dangling overhead was practically no help at all. He’d get that wiped off first. He tested his weight on the breadbin into which he’d just slid Mr Herbert’s pre-dated certificate, ready for any battles to come (‘Not with the rest of the paperwork? Good heavens! Let me send you a certified copy of the original’) then, guessing the breadbin’s lid wouldn’t bear his weight without denting, went off for a chair he could climb on.
Now that his eyes were level with the highest shelf, he could see everything she kept up here. Perhaps, he thought, suddenly reminded of his detritus in the woodshed, she was versed in her own form of medical wizardry. There was that stuff she used to make him gargle with when he had mouth boils. A sticky-lidded jar of glycerine of thymol. Some ancient Friar’s Balsam. One or two linseed poultices. A package of grubby-looking thermo-gene wool. And an old nasal douche bag.