Rattling the Bones

by Ann Granger

  ‘How can you tell?’ asked Ganesh frowning. He wasn’t frowning at anything I’d said but because long rubbery strings of cheese dangled from his fork and he couldn’t break them. The more he twiddled the fork, trying to wrap them round the tines, the longer and thinner the strings became. He picked up his knife and chopped at them but they flattened beneath the blade.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ he demanded in exasperation.

  At that moment the strings of cheese parted and he managed to get them into a manageable forkful.

  ‘How can you tell how Edna’s feeling?’ he went on when he’d swallowed it with an expression of distaste. ‘She’s not like other people. Her expressions aren’t like other people’s. She never liked strangers. She didn’t like having you stop her in the street. I expect just the crowd round her spooked her.’

  ‘It was him,’ I said firmly. ‘He frightened her. If he was innocent, why did he run?’

  ‘He didn’t actually run, you said.’ Ganesh can be annoyingly pedantic.

  ‘So he walked very fast! He deliberately gave me the slip. He did it very professionally, too. He’s done it a few times, I reckon, given people the slip. He knew exactly what to do.’

  ‘If I didn’t know you and you were obviously following me, I’d give you the slip,’ argued Ganesh. ‘That’s your trouble, see? You’re always so set on doing just what you want - and generally that means the first thing to come into your head - that you never stop to consider how it looks to other people. I know you. I accept that you act like a lunatic sometimes. I don’t like it but I’ve learned to live with it. Other people just think you’re weird.’ He abandoned the cheese which had set like plastic now it had cooled, and stared at me thoughtfully. ‘Especially,’ he said, ‘with that funny-coloured hair.’

  I was feeling sensitive about my hair at that moment and I thought it tactless of him to mention it. The rest of what he’d said I generally went along with. I am aware other people sometimes find me strange. But the way I see it, that’s their problem. The hair colour was mine.

  ‘The label on the box said the rinse was dark auburn,’ I defended myself feebly.

  ‘That,’ said Ganesh, jabbing his fork at me, ‘isn’t dark auburn. It’s crimson.You look like your head’s on fire.’

  ‘OK, I’ll buy another rinse and do something about it. Only I can’t do anything about it now, can I? What about Edna?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Gan!’ I couldn’t help my voice rising. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Especially “we” are going to do nothing. I have no problem with any of this. It’s your overactive imagination and that drama training you had. Everything’s a big production with you. Everything is villains and plots and dark deeds and you, of course, cast as the heroine putting all that right.’

  I was opening my mouth and trying to get a word of protest in but he wouldn’t let me and steamrollered on.

  ‘You don’t know anything’s wrong. You thought she looked frightened but with Edna that might mean anything. You thought the guy over the road was watching. All right, then, perhaps he was. It’s not illegal. It’s not even odd. When I’m waiting about for you I watch people going past. The guy was hanging about for whatever reason and watching you talk to a bag lady was probably as interesting as anything else, beats staring into space.’

  ‘But - but - but . . .’ from me, in vain.

  Ganesh, who would have done well on a drama course himself even though he would have been inclined to nineteenth-century melodrama, raised a hand like an old-time traffic cop. ‘Then, then you chose to chase after him and he decided reasonably enough to shake you off. What is more . . .’

  He glared at me because I had taken refuge in a pantomime of elaborate yawns and hand movements before the mouth.

  ‘Even if there was the slightest chance you were even partly right, you couldn’t check it out. If you found Edna again and asked her about it, she wouldn’t remember, or she wouldn’t tell you or she’d tell you something quite untrue. She doesn’t know fact from fiction.’

  Give Ganesh enough rope and he runs on that bit too far. He’d played into my hands. I put down my fork and pointed a triumphant forefinger at him. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ganesh, and if you think back to the Rotherhithe days, you’ll agree. Anything Edna ever said was true. It might come out sounding a bit odd. But she never invented anything. She told me after Terry was murdered that she’d seen someone hanging round the house and she was right, wasn’t she? She could even describe him after a fashion. Edna doesn’t miss anything. She might not choose to talk about it, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t noticed. She told me today she’d been engaged to be married once and I believe her.’

  Ganesh hooted with laughter, very rudely, I thought and said so.

  He subsided. ‘All right. The old woman isn’t nearly as daft as she makes out. She probably was quite respectable long ago. Something made her flip. She dropped out and never dropped back in again. It happens all the time.’ Ganesh frowned again and added wistfully, ‘Only it couldn’t happen to me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because my family would come after me and find me and drag me back to sell spuds or newspapers or whatever they’re into at the time. There’s no escaping them!’ He eyed me again. ‘You, on the other hand, might end up just like Edna.’

  ‘Well, thanks a bundle. I’ll do my best not to. I am going to find out what’s going on, though, with your help or without it.’

  ‘First you’ve got to find Edna again,’ Ganesh pointed out.

  ‘All right, I will!’

  ‘No, no! I didn’t mean that, not literally. I meant, you won’t find her again,’ he back-pedalled hastily.

  ‘What do you bet I can’t find her?’ I was beginning to sound stroppy, I knew, but Gan has that effect on me.

  He said gloomily, ‘Fran, you’re going to get into trouble again. Leave it alone.’

  ‘According to you, there’s no trouble to get into! If you’re right, and the bloke watching wasn’t interested in Edna after all, then I’m not getting into anything.’

  Ganesh considered this argument and grudgingly admitted it made sense. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘what possible interest could Edna be to anyone?’

  ‘There you are,’ I agreed, even though it sounded as though I had accepted what he’d said and I hadn’t. I knew someone was interested in Edna.

  I had hoped Ganesh would let it go at that but he was in lecturing mode. He couldn’t get Hari to listen to him so he was obliging me to do it.

  ‘The problem is,’ he began again, very unfairly I thought, ‘as soon as you start poking your nose in, there’s trouble all over the place. You sort of attract it. You make things happen. You’re a - a catalyst, that’s the word!’

  That really got my goat. ‘If everyone was like you,’ I snapped, ‘no one would do anything! They’d all stand by and let awful things happen. Incidentally, I don’t poke my nose in; I am a public-spirited citizen. What should I do when I see something I feel is dodgy, run away?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ said Ganesh.

  There was a silence. ‘You wouldn’t,’ I said at last. Because he wouldn’t, not if he thought someone needed help.

  Ganesh pushed away the remains of the cheese-filled spud. He brushed back his hair which he’d regrown after cutting it for the play. It was now well past ear-lobe length. I wondered if that was what Hari had been nagging at him about.

  ‘Fran, listen to me for once, will you? It’s great to help someone if you can. But if you can’t help and you’re just meddling, it makes things worse. That’s what you need to remember: there’s helping and there’s interfering and the line between the two is very fine.’

  If he’d left it there, I would have shut up. But he overstepped the mark again and went on to say, ‘And as far as Edna is concerned, you’re onto a loser.’

  ‘Someone has to help the losers,’ I told him. ‘I’m not run
ning away from Edna just because she’s wandering the streets wearing three layers of cast-offs and woolly hats in warm weather.’

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ was all I got in reply.

  ‘OK, I’ll consider myself warned, all right!’ I growled at him.

  I had told Ganesh I would find Edna and I would. I set about it first thing the very next morning. It would be no good hanging round the Tube station because she might not walk that way again for weeks. If she was scared of the man in white, she probably wouldn’t. But I knew she was living in a hostel. So the obvious thing to do was to visit all the hostels in the area and ask for her.

  I hadn’t told Ganesh I meant to do this. It was a pretty sure thing that whatever I proposed doing, Ganesh would have objected and found a dozen reasons why a) I shouldn’t do it and b) it wouldn’t work if I did. He was only running true to form in all his doom-mongering, although I can’t say his argument hadn’t given me a moment’s pause for thought. Perhaps I was imagining things and meddling? No, I decided, it might be a good idea to run from this particular little problem, but I wasn’t going to do it. But when did I ever make a sensible decision?

  Perhaps it’s something to do with never taking Ganesh’s advice.

  Numerous hostels for the homeless or mentally afflicted exist in the capital. If Edna had been wandering around all day, she could have walked quite a distance from her hostel. I was aware that it need not be a local one. But I still thought it most likely she was living in the general area. Anyway, I had to start somewhere. To begin near to home and cast ever-increasing circles made the most sense.

  What reason could I give anyone for asking about her, supposing I found the right place? I didn’t know her surname. Perhaps her real first name wasn’t even Edna.

  As it happened I was again without work, either acting or any other sort. Usually, when there’s nothing else on offer, I help out at the newsagent’s but they hadn’t needed me lately. Perhaps it wasn’t because he’d refused to cut his hair but because business was so slow that Ganesh and his uncle had quarrelled. Hari gets tetchy when receipts are down. Then, when he’s tetchy, he nags Ganesh about his hair. I ought to do something about my hair, too. The red colour was awful. But now I had business in hand and it would have to wait.

  So I went about my task in a businesslike way. I contacted local Social Services and talked to a nice woman wearing a pink Marks & Spencer’s cardigan. She worked in a cluttered office surrounded by files and pictures of cats. I told her I was a social studies student, researching the economic effects of the increase in the ageing population, with comparisons drawn over a cross-section of socio-demographic groups, projected rise in per capita outlay and falling birth rate. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant and hoped she didn’t ask. I got the key phrases from an article in a magazine in the local library, wrote them down and joined them up. As part of my research, I explained, I needed to investigate the provision of hostel care.

  I didn’t consider any of this telling lies; I considered it being creative. Besides, not all of what I told her was untrue.

  ‘I’ve been homeless myself,’ I said with perfect honesty. ‘Luckily those days are behind me. My particular area of interest is housing the elderly homeless and those who might be considered as having mental problems. Not serious problems but low-level ones.’

  ‘Touched?’ suggested the woman kindly.

  ‘That’s it. It’s a neglected category and that’s why I’ve chosen it. People prefer to write about dysfunctional families or . . .’

  I glanced at the cat photos. ‘Or feral animals in a city environment. A friend of mine is writing about urban foxes. But we all grow old, don’t we? And not all of us fit into society.’

  The woman’s face darkened and I feared I’d made a tactless remark. Perhaps she had just passed a landmark birthday date. But it turned out something else had caused her displeasure.

  ‘One of my kitties was killed by a fox,’ she said. ‘Right in my back garden.’

  I commiserated.

  She cheered up. ‘Well, let’s see what we can do for you,’ she said.

  She eventually gave me a list of hostels, along with a load of other stuff, and wished me luck in my studies.

  ‘Come back and see us when you’ve graduated,’ were her closing words. ‘We desperately need suitable people to come forward for training in social work. Have you thought of being a social worker? There are lots of opportunities and you seem just the type of young person we’re looking to recruit. If you want to talk about it as a career option at any time, come and see me.’

  I resolved not to tell Ganesh any of this because he would have asked me if I had felt absolutely no twinges of conscience. To which the reply would have been, no, I didn’t.

  I left clutching my list of hostels and set out. I took my dog, Bonnie, with me. I was going to be gone for the best part of the day and I don’t like leaving her shut in for so long. She frets.

  It was a warm day and not long before both Bonnie and I were hot and footsore and fed up. I began to think I should have listened to Ganesh. I was wasting my time. Not only that but the places I called at were unutterably depressing and, in some cases, frightening. I dodged nutters, druggies and alkies. When I wasn’t scared by what I found I was angry and frustrated. I could never be a social worker, I realised, because I could never cultivate the necessary objectivity. I would care too much about each and every one and consequently probably mess up. Today only obstinacy (and not wanting to have to admit to Ganesh that he was right) made me carry on. As is often the case, just when I was about to give up I struck pay dirt.

  It was a small place, run by some charity, and located in a run-down Victorian house which had once been a beautiful home. It was not unlike the house in which I had a flat. A few trees struggled to survive in the quiet road outside and one grew directly opposite the front door and spread its branches across the pavement. It wasn’t yet autumn but leaves were just starting to turn colour and a few to drift down. Some lay scattered across the unswept steps leading up to the door. Among them, sitting on the top step, huddled against an ornate cast-iron boot scraper, sat a young woman with long tangled hair, wearing mismatched odds and ends of clothing. She was weeping silently.

  She wasn’t the first mentally ill person I’d come across in my trawl that day, but it was still awful to watch. If she’d sobbed loudly and rocked herself in grief I could have handled it better. But this silent weeping like a stone figure in a Victorian cemetery was completely unnerving. I edged round the girl and rang the doorbell.

  After a few moments I heard footsteps and the door opened just wide enough for someone to peer out. They learn to be cautious in these places, I guess. I was relieved to see - as far as I could see him - that the man who’d answered the bell looked normal.

  ‘We’re full,’ he said but in a kindly way.

  ‘I’m not looking for a bed,’ I replied.

  He opened the door a little wider. ‘That’s all right, then. We couldn’t take you, no matter what the circumstances.’

  I wondered if the weeping girl had been similarly rejected and that was the cause of her grief. I indicated her surreptitiously and whispered to him, ‘Is she all right?’

  It was a stupid question because obviously she wasn’t but I didn’t quite know what else to say. The man appeared to be unaware of her although how he could be, when she sat there on his top step, I couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Sandra?’ he replied. ‘Yes, yes, don’t worry. She’s a bit sad this morning, aren’t you, Sandy?’

  He stooped and patted the girl’s shoulder. She swayed a little to and fro and then carried on weeping as before, only now making a snuffling noise. If anything, it was worse.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the man said to me. ‘We’re keeping an eye on her. Was that why you rang? You were worried about Sandra?’

  ‘No,’ I confessed, ‘about somebody else. Can I come in? I won’t take up much of your time and I’d really appr
eciate it.’

  ‘One of our residents?’ he asked more sharply.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.’

  ‘We don’t give out information on residents.’

  ‘I’m not asking for information.’

  ‘You said you were,’ he pointed out, not unreasonably.

  ‘Please,’ I begged, ‘can I come in and explain? It will take five minutes and I’ll pick up the dog.’ I scooped Bonnie up into my arms as I spoke. She had been sitting by the weeping girl, watching her with interest. The girl appeared as oblivious of Bonnie as of me and the conversation going on over her head.

  The guardian stared down thoughtfully at Sandra and I think it was more on her account than on mine that he made his decision. He opened the door wide enough for me to squeeze through and stood back.