As She Left It: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  Opal laughed. “And the students don’t count,” she said. “Even when they’re here. They’d eat the lot and deny it! But Mrs. Pickess over there’s always in. And Denn—”

  He nodded but he wasn’t smiling, and he was stepping away from her.

  “Thanks,” he lobbed at her, which shut her up. She was only trying to help. He went inside No. 4 and closed the door firmly. Opal was still standing there, hands on her hips, face blank, when Vonnie Pickess pushed aside her fly curtain and peered out.

  “Did I just hear my name?” she called.

  Opal managed not to groan. She’d had a good run, going in and out the back and washing her front windows after she’d seen Mrs. Pickess going for a bus, but she’d have to face it sometime.

  “Hiya, Mrs. P.,” she said. “The new neighbor was just wondering about who could take in deliveries.”

  “I wouldn’t want to push myself forward,” said Mrs. Pickess. “I’ve tried to be friendly already and got my nose bitten off for me. Never even got his name out of him.” Opal shifted her weight from side to side; Mrs. Pickess was speaking very loud, probably hoping her voice would carry in and he’d come out with some letters of introduction. Then she lowered it. “What is it? What’s he called, Mr. Hoity-toity?”

  Opal opened her mouth to tell her but then closed it again. He hadn’t said, had he? She’d said hers and he’d just said hello. That was a bit funny.

  “I didn’t catch it,” Opal said. But something else had snagged Mrs. Pickess’s attention now.

  “What did you use on these blessed windows?” she said. “Look at the state of that.”

  “First pass,” said Opal. She had used washing up liquid and dried them with a towel.

  “A home can tell between a broom and a cat’s lick,” Mrs. Pickess said. Opal thought she couldn’t have sounded more like a witch if she’d tried, never mind what did that even mean? “My mother,” Mrs. Pickess continued, “used nothing but vinegar and newspaper, cleaned her step every day with a nub of— What’s that?” She was bent over looking down at Opal’s step, which had probably once been as red and shining as Mrs. Pickess’s and her mother’s before her, but which had been bare grey in the middle and faded orange at the edges as long as Opal could remember. “What have you been putting on here, Opal?” She crouched down and dabbed a finger into the film of crumbly red dust the neighbor man had shaken off himself, standing there.

  Opal bent down too. Mrs. Pickess was staring at her finger as if there were bugs crawling on it, but Opal brought a pinch of it up to her nose and breathed in the scent she hadn’t noticed when the little man had been standing there.

  “It’s sawdust,” she said, thinking again about the garden-centre carvings.

  “Well, it wants sweeping,” said Mrs. Pickess. “This int a butchers. You get that swept up and I’ll do over your windows.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Opal, firmly. She wanted to speak to Mrs. Pickess—of course she did, living right next door to where Craig had gone missing and always watching—but not tonight. “It’s my day off. Come over and have a coffee then.” Mrs. Pickess’s eyes flashed with sudden fire at the thought of getting a good look inside Opal’s house and not having to content herself with what she could pick out through the window, so she trotted back over the road without protesting.

  Opal went to close up her ice cube compartment and her fridge—left hanging open and whirring away in the hot kitchen—and from next door she heard the unmistakable grating pop of someone stabbing the film on a tray of food for the microwave. Lasagne. Then she listened again at the sound of gulps and a rough, sawdusty sob that turned into a cough. Lasagne and bitter tears, she thought. Why in the name of God did he move here?

  THIRTEEN

  A FULL-TIME PICKING SHIFT for dot com was six to two, which was terrible for buses on a Saturday morning—Opal thought about getting a bike, maybe even a mountain bike to startle an explanation out of Zula Joshi—but ideal for working on quests in the afternoons. Saturday afternoon saw her back at Billy and Tony’s—Walrus Antiques, it was called—waiting for a break in the customers so she could pick brains. She sat in the chair where Billy’d had had his sulk and she pretended to read her magazine, but no makeup tips or keep-your-man quiz in the world could compete with the problems pressing down on the lives of the other half: a cleaner who couldn’t be trusted with crystal droplets, twins who would have to be kept away from satinwood, a kitchen in a cellar with a turn in the stairs that no chapel pew could get round even if you greased it with butter. Tony gave up explaining how to measure the cubic space of the tightest corner and went through the back to saw down a piece of doweling for them to take away. Meantime, one of the other couples had fallen out over a print of some sheep in a gold oval and left, so Billy turned to Opal with rolling eyes and asked if she’d slept well. He gave her a good look up and down, like you’d expect someone in cuff links and brogues to give to someone in leggings and flip-flops, but he was smiling.

  “Excuse me,” said a tall thin woman with those brutal rectangular glasses. “We were first.” Her partner, Opal decided as she looked at him, had been hounded into the same specs and a haircut that looked like a mop spread out to dry on his head. He seemed as unhappy about it as he was about the set of six dining chairs his wife was standing guard over with her arms folded and her chin high.

  “Madam?” said Billy, and Opal raised her mag to hide her face. The preamble “Well, aren’t you a right little—” hung in the air.

  “What’s your best price?” the woman said.

  “Yes, they are beautiful, aren’t they?” Billy said. “Arts and crafts, eighteen nineties.”

  “They need reupholstered,” she countered.

  “The tapestry is original.”

  “The stuffing’s coming out.”

  “Some attention wouldn’t go amiss.”

  The male part of the pair chipped in: “They’re bloody uncomfortable, Ash.”

  “Posture,” said his wife.

  “Piles?” said Billy. Opal snorted. “I do beg your pardon. Hemorrhoids, I should say.”

  “And they won’t go with the table,” the man threw in.

  “Well they’ll juxtapose, of course.”

  “Right,” said Billy. “That’s it. You’ve said the J word. Thanks for stopping by.”

  “What?” said the woman. “Is that a joke?”

  “Seriously,” Billy said. “We don’t do juxtaposition here. We do matching, fitting, nearly fitting, toning, and clashing. Take your pick. What kind of table is it you have, anyway?”

  “Ikea,” said the man.

  His wife hissed like a cat. “Modernist,” she said, but the fight had gone out of her. They took a card from the till and left.

  “Poor bugger,” said Opal when they had gone.

  “Who me?” said Billy. “I know. What I have to put up with.”

  “No, him,” Opal said. “You don’t have to put up with her.”

  “I have to put up with you, though. What is it now?”

  “I worked it out,” Opal said.

  “Congratulations. Have you come back for a table with four piano legs? Chaise longue with some wardrobe doors?”

  “At least you’re laughing,” said Opal. Tony ushered the couple, their diagram, and their length of dowelling back through the shop and out of the door.

  “It took Billy all night, a curry, and a crate of stout to see it,” Tony said. He hung his little hacksaw from one of the loops on his overalls and wiped the dust off his hands with a red bandana. “Are you sure they weren’t going to buy those chairs, Billy-boy? I heard you at that poor cow.”

  “Best price!” Billy huffed.

  “I’ve told you before, we’re not an adoption agency,” Tony said, sinking down onto one of the arts and crafts chairs and pulling another forward to prop his feet on. “Make us a cup of tea,” he added. “Ooh, that fellow was right, you know. They are a bit hard on the old bumbeleary. Maybe we should sell them in twos as hall ch
airs. I’ll take four out the back and stash them.”

  “Can I just ask?” Opal said, not sure whether to be offended that they so obviously didn’t think she was a customer or flattered they had given up the shopkeeper pose and funny voices they had used when the real customers were here.

  “Sorry, love,” Tony said. “What are you after today?”

  “Where did you get the bed?”

  “No good, flower, we phoned,” said Billy. “They haven’t got the other halves. Don’t think it didn’t occur. Oh, we weren’t above that lark at one time, were we Tone?”

  “What lark?” said Opal.

  “Remember those poxy antique fairs?” said Billy. Tony was carrying a pair of chairs, one upside-down on the other like a Jack in playing cards, and Billy leaned after him, shouting, laughing again. “Tony? Remember? We used to take two stands instead of one—a table or a grotty little stall in a community centre and we’d each take a pile of separate stuff, only I’d take one of a pair of vases and Tony would take the other. I’d put mine in a box with a load of crap, stick a fiver on it, and Tony’d have his front and centre, fifty quid. You wouldn’t believe the bidding that went on. Three hundred for Italian majolica sometimes. And as soon as whoever had left the room we’d each take out another one and start again.”

  “Should you be telling people that?” said Opal.

  “What people?” Billy said, looking around. “Oh, you mean you! Well, it was a long time ago now.”

  “When times were hard and friends were few,” said Tony coming back with three mugs of tea. “That’s not what this auction was up to, anyway. They had a laugh at us, but they haven’t a clue where the other pieces are.”

  “Did they try to track them down?” Opal said.

  “Track them … ?” said Billy.

  “I want to try to find them. So—thanks for the tea, by the way—can you tell me what auction place it was?”

  “Find them how?” said Tony.

  “I don’t know,” Opal said. “I’ve never done it before.” Which made both of them laugh at her. “But I’ll tell you this: if I do it, I’ll split them with you. You get one bed and I get the other.”

  Billy and Tony shared a look, eyebrows high and lips pursed, sizing up the deal.

  “You’re on,” Tony said. “In return for telling you where the two halves came from—”

  “And buying the other two halves when I find them,” Opal broke in. “If they’re for sale. I don’t have that kind of cash.”

  “Cheeky!” said Billy. “Oh, fair enough, go on then. You find the bits and we’ll stump up. It was Claypole’s at Northallerton.”

  “Aw, great,” said Opal. “How am I going to get all the way up there? You’re not going back for any reason anytime soon, are you?”

  “Forget it,” Billy said. “I took enough of a slagging for that bid. I’m not going back up there with my bloodhound and magnifying glass like—”

  “Miss Marple,” offered Tony, smirking. “So which bed do we get anyway, love? If you find them. Are you particular?”

  “You get the headboard we’ve got already and the new footboard,” Opal said. “I keep the foot and take the new head. And the side bits and the spring. And the mattress.”

  “Which was which again?” Tony said. “I can’t remember.”

  “Oh, let it unfold,” said Billy. “Chances are it’ll never—no offense.”

  “None taken,” said Opal and finished her tea. The door dinged and another couple in retro clothes and ugly haircuts come in.

  “We’re looking for a pair of chairs to stand either side of a coat stand in our front hall,” the woman said, and Billy stood to help them.

  FOURTEEN

  SHE SHOULD HAVE GONE straight home and waited for Mrs. Pickess. Of course she should. For one, it was rude not to be there good and early; for another, Craig Southgate was the most important thing she had to do. He was now—or not too long ago, anyway—and the little bed girl was in antique times for all Opal could tell from the brittle yellow paper and the loopy writing. But the problem was that if Zula Joshi really did know more than she should about what day Craig went missing and if Mrs. Pickess remembered something useful, Opal would have to tell someone. And then it would be the police and the papers and wondering for the rest of her life if she’d done the right thing. So she stopped at the bottom of Mote Street and knocked on Fishbo’s door before Mrs. Pickess could see her.

  At least finding someone’s long-lost family wasn’t the kind of thing you’d ever kick yourself for.

  “Baby Girl!” said Fishbo. “I thought you’d forgotten me. Now step right in. I’m all ready.” He shuffled aside and pointed Opal towards the right-hand room, the music room, which was away from the shared wall so that Fishbo’s pupils could squeak and honk their way towards a tune all day, and the Mote Street Boys could squeak and honk their way back again all night and blame it on jazz. It was just the way Opal remembered it: last decorated by the last resident who cared about wallpaper, only more rusted now with another ten years of nicotine clinging to the cornice and the lampshades. She looked at herself in the mirror hanging by a chain above the tiled fireplace, remembering when she had been too small to see anything in it except the reflection of the opposite wall. The sideboard was still loaded with sheet music, skeletons of dismantled trumpets, scrabbled tangles of guitar strings, and a bent cymbal with a rash of apple and bananas stickers spreading over it. There was the same old couch and the same three chairs, ashtrays on the arms, shoes kicked off half under the frills, folded newspapers sliding down the sides. There was the same coffee table covered in opened mail, tea mugs, smeared plates with drying bacon rinds.

  The little table beside Fishbo’s armchair was the same too—a brimming ashtray, a bottle of something Opal had called “Mr. Fish’s medicine for his throat” but that she now saw was Southern Comfort, three cans of coke left in a plastic noose made for six, and a sticky glass almost empty. His chair itself had flattened and sagged and been bolstered up again with new cushions, too bright against all the fawn and beige of spilled coffee and tobacco. In the centre of the room, as always, there was a music stand, a hard chair, and an open trumpet case on it, the horn itself glittering with polish.

  “Can I tidy up a bit for you?” Opal said, before she could help it. It never used to bother her, the cans and the bacon rind, but now a little thrill of something unwelcome went through her, like running past railings with a stick and letting it rap against them. It was too much to be in this room again, as if she would go back across the road and find Nicola there, glass sticky with brandy, different ashtray just as full.

  “Women!” Fishbo said. “All the same! Cain’t let a man be.”

  “I’m just saying,” said Opal.

  “Well, save your damn breath to blow your damn horn,” said Fishbo. He let himself fall into his armchair, put one claw on each armrest, looking like some kind of Bond villain or something, and nodded at the trumpet, waiting there, pulsing with the late sunlight filtering in the window.

  Opal picked it up and tried the keys. They were smooth and free and she bit her tongue to keep from asking how come they could all keep their instruments like new pins and live in such a pigsty. That was one of Vonnie Pickess’s expressions—“like a new pin”—familiar from when she used to regale Margaret or Nicola or anyone who would listen about what a palace No. 1 had been before Mrs. Kendal gave Pep up as a bad job and moved back to Derby.

  It had been ten years since she had put a trumpet to her lips, but everything about it was as familiar as if she played for an hour every day: the nudge of the rim against her bottom teeth, the crackle in her ears as she built up the pressure of her breath ready to blow, the forgotten—until remembered with a jolt—reflection of her own face in the back of the flare. She wiggled her eyebrows at Fishbo, cocked her elbows, and started softly to play.

  Not good. What leapt to mind was Pinocchio trying to speak and finding out he was a donkey. She took the mouthpiece
away with a jerk, apologised to Fishbo (who was sitting bolt upright with the shock), and tried again. Another sliding, farting groan belched out of the flare and ended with a screech like nails on a blackboard.

  “Man, oh man,” said Fishbo.

  “Bloody hell,” said Opal. “Scales?”

  “Scales, baby.”

  “And I’ll put a baffle in.”

  After twenty minutes, it wasn’t so bad. Her fingering and her breath control were coming back to her, the notes were holding steady, and the rasping had stopped, but her cheek muscles were aching. She took the mouthpiece off, polished it, emptied the condensation from the spit valve, and placed the trumpet flare down on the seat of the hard chair.

  “I wish I’d practised,” she said, remembering Steph and Sandy nagging her and the trumpet case sitting in the shoe cupboard day after day, month after month, until Steph got sick of dusting it and moved it to the loft.

  “You’ll be jes’ fine,” said Fishbo. “End of next week, you’ll be good as new.”

  “Why? What’s on at the end of next week?” Opal said, but he must have heard the nerves in her voice, and he waved the question away. “What age did you start at?” she asked, leaping on the first way she could think of to get him talking about the past.

  “I was nine,” said Fishbo. “Little nappy-headed critter. Nine years old with a little toy trumpet my daddy gave me.”

  “Was he a trumpet player too?” Opal asked, and Fishbo slapped his knee, making his foot lift up off the floor in a reflex.

  “Daddy? Not hardly, Baby Girl. He worked on the railroad. He had no music in his soul. Somebody left that toy trumpet in the railway car, see, and so he wrapped it up as a gift and gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “He told you that?” said Opal.

  “Not right then,” Fishbo said. “Later, when I wanted to git me a full-size horn, I tried to hawk it. Daddy hit me upsides and down saying I didn’t get a good price, y’know? Drive a hard bargain. He said it was a fine little horn, worth more than I sold it for. See, I’d been thinkin’ if I got it for my birthday, it must be bottom of the damn range, cuz I knew how dirt poor we were.” Fishbo was laughing and shaking his head as if this was the funniest story he’d ever heard, but it made Opal feel as if she might cry. Then Fishbo himself seemed to hear a different strain in the air of it too, and he grew sober. “Aw, Daddy,” he said. “Long gone now. Little nappy-headed critter won’t be too long following him home.”