‘He’s lying on his side in his front yard … not unconscious,’ he added quickly, ‘just not able to get up. See, the thing is, his sister, Violet, she won’t open the door and I’ve rung a couple of cabs, thought I could take him back to mine, but when they see him, man, they’re not happy.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s a bit of a mess.’
‘Mess?’
Another cough. ‘Vomit.’
‘His own?’
‘Course it’s his own. What, you think I got him drunk and then vomited on him? Jeez, you’re priceless, and you know what, he might not have started off at such a lick and kept right on throwing it down his throat if he hadn’t had to put up with Bernice and Sol beforehand. They had him trapped in the corner. Only thing would have made it worse was if Esther had shown up. This a party trick of yours? Dropping me in it with Esther and now doing it with Gilbert and …’ Grace could almost hear Tate’s mind putting the brakes on as it pointed out to his mouth that Grace was their best hope of sorting this out. ‘Look, scrub that. He got drunk on my watch, I’ll put my hand up to it … But Gracie, it’s freezing out here. I’m worried about him getting hypothermia.’
‘Have you tried ringing Violet? She’ll be too scared to open the door.’
‘Tried it. Won’t pick up. I was wondering … Gilb says she talks to you and listens to you. We need your help to get her to open up this door.’
‘But you said I didn’t have to look after everyone like some freakin’ mother hen.’
There was a sigh. ‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘And that the world wouldn’t stop spinning if I took my eye off it.’
‘Yeah, I said that too.’
Grace went for the triple. ‘You assured me that things wouldn’t descend into chaos just because I wasn’t there to keep everything under control.’
‘Remembered it word for word, huh? OK, OK. I was wrong, big time. We do need you.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can get a taxi. Make sure he’s lying on his side. Tell Violet quietly through the letterbox that Grace is coming. Oh, and she’ll need to put some paper down. Probably a lot of it. And try to keep Gilbert warm.’
‘Thanks, Gracie. Appreciate it.’
‘I’m doing this for Gilbert and Violet.’
‘Kind of figured that,’ he said morosely before Grace ended the call.
*
Violet had come to the bottom of the stairs once or twice but retreated again to the upstairs box room where she could look down on Gilbert lying in the flower bed. That lavender would never recover. The blond-haired man was on the telephone and it made the phone in the hall ring, which really wasn’t nice. He kept looking up at the window and Violet kept ducking out of sight.
She needed to sit quietly and have a think about this. Her heart felt as if it would break a rib.
She wanted to let Gilbert in, but she didn’t want that other one in. That Tate. She was sure that was who it was. Gilbert said he had blond hair and this man had blond hair. She scurried to her own bedroom before drifting back to the box room and peering out of the window again. Tate didn’t have his coat on any more – it was draped over Gilbert – and Tate was blowing on his hands and then wrapping his arms around himself. Why did he have so many zips on his trousers?
She saw him kneel down and heard the letterbox clunk. Was he putting something through? She ran to the top of the stairs and bent down until she could see. No, nothing on the mat. He was saying something, but she couldn’t make out what. Not speaking English. He was going on and on and it was getting inside her head, not making any sense. She put her hands over her ears. It was worse than the mice.
*
As the taxi drew up outside Gilbert and Violet’s house, Grace caught a glimpse of Gilbert lying on his side in a bed of lavender. He was under Tate’s coat and doing a strange bicycling action with his legs.
Tate was kneeling down talking into the letterbox and, as she paid the taxi, making a note to get the money back later, she saw him jerk his head back sharply from the letterbox.
‘Holy crap,’ he shouted as his hand came up to his mouth and he flung something down on the path. He staggered to his feet and stood, hand to his mouth again, looking at the letterbox.
As she walked up the path, she saw there was a stick with a claw-type mechanism lying near the door.
‘Owwww,’ Tate was saying, squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them. He moved his hand and she saw there was a red mark on his lip. The silver ring on his thumb shone in the light from the upstairs window and he touched his lip again tentatively. He looked frozen. ‘Just attacked me with that,’ he said, aiming his boot at the stick, and she found that idea so funny that she started to laugh and couldn’t stop, even when she went over to Gilbert and put her hands on his legs to prevent him from cycling any further.
‘Ohhhh, Grace,’ Gilbert moaned and hid his face in the lavender.
‘Soon have you in the warm, Gilbert,’ she said, tucking Tate’s coat round him more securely.
She left Gilbert and returned to the front door, but started laughing again when she saw the stick thing. She didn’t even care that she might be giving too much of herself away with that laugh. She was tipping her head back, her hand over her mouth. When she’d got herself back under control, she picked up the stick and pictured Violet creeping up to the letterbox and managing to catch Tate’s lip with it.
‘Good shot,’ she said. ‘She’s sixty and she gave you a thick lip.’
Tate rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, and thanks for suggesting that talking through the letterbox idea. Really worked out for me.’
‘Big target to aim for, your mouth.’
‘Yup, good one. Got any more? ’Cos I’m dying of laughter here. Think it might get me before the hypothermia.’
‘Oh, come on, don’t look so down in the mouth.’ She started to laugh again and he shook his head and went to check on Gilbert.
Grace was getting cold herself now so did the special knock Violet had asked her to do when she visited and waited a few seconds. She put her mouth to the wood of the door.
‘Violet, it’s Grace. I know you’re probably very upset by all this … commotion, but Gilbert needs to come in the warm or he’s going to get ill. I promise you that I will keep an eye on Tate, but we will need him to help carry Gilbert into the house, so I can’t send him away.’ She waited and listened. ‘Violet, I’m not going to say anything else. Just leave you to have a think about that. I’m going to post your stick back through the letterbox. I have my gloves on.’
She posted the stick back and heard noises on the other side of the door. A few minutes later and it opened a crack, then a little more.
‘Would you like me to push the door open all the way now, Violet? Do it for you so you can just go away?’
There was a faint ‘yes’ and then, ‘Make sure everyone stays on the paper.’
‘I will.’ Grace pushed the door open and saw the sheets of paper along the hall and up the stairs.
Tate managed to manoeuvre Gilbert into a sitting position and then the two of them got him to his feet. He smelt hideous. Tate draped one of Gilbert’s arms over his shoulder and Grace took the other one. Gilbert’s head mainly lolled downwards except when he lifted it to go ‘oomph’ or ‘ohhhh’. They shuffled him over the doorstep and into the hall and Tate kicked the door shut behind them.
Grace didn’t much care for her head being in such close proximity to that blond one, but the smell of vomit and the strain of Gilbert’s weight on her shoulder was more pressing.
‘We’ll take him up to the bathroom first. Is that all right, Violet?’ she called and got a wobbly ‘yes’ back. The plan was going well; they’d even managed to turn so that, while Tate paid attention to Gilbert’s legs, Grace went up a step and then another before Tate followed. But on the third step the jarring must have got to Gilbert because he threw up, heaving over and over again. And almost none of it went on the paper.
‘What’s happening?’ Violet
called.
Grace didn’t want to answer because that meant breathing in the awful smell.
‘Gilbert’s hiccupping,’ Tate said, ‘but Gracie has got it all under control. You know Gracie,’ and then they carried on hauling Gilbert up the stairs.
*
Violet sat in the kitchen holding on to the edge of the table and listening to people moving around upstairs. They were talking, running the water and flushing the toilet.
‘Can I come into the kitchen?’ she heard Grace ask from the doorway and when she said, ‘Yes,’ there Grace was. She didn’t look very neat tonight. Her hair was all messed up and her face was shiny as if she’d been exercising.
‘Would you mind if I got some hot water, Violet? I need to … wash my face. And freshen up a bit of the stairs.’
‘Freshen up?’ Violet felt as if she might need to get the paper bag out of the drawer and breathe into it.
‘Just a few spots of mud that went from Gilbert’s shoes on to the carpet. Soon lifted,’ Grace said brightly and Violet considered that. Mud was a good dirt – smeary, but plants grew in it and it might be all right if there wasn’t much. Grace seemed confident it would be easy to clean.
She put the kettle on and the immersion heater for later.
‘You gave Tate quite a nip with your stick thing,’ Grace said, nodding at it on the table.
Violet had forgotten that. ‘Well, he wouldn’t stop talking.’ A sudden spike of fear shimmied up between her lungs. ‘It wasn’t a bad thing to do, was it, Grace?’
‘No,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve often felt like doing it to him myself. I may have to buy something similar.’
*
Grace had sponged Gilbert down as well as she could and washed his hands and face, and she left the room while Tate undressed him as far as his underpants and got him into bed. Grace found a bowl in the bathroom and they put Gilbert on his side and the bowl on the floor by the bed. Working together like this made her think of Monday again – that companionship – so she went to clear up the mess on the stairs, quietly opening the front door and chucking the dirty water into the garden. She didn’t give much for the chance of that lavender surviving now. She tried to smooth out the scuffed and grubby paper too, but the stuff up the stairs was as sorry-looking as the lavender.
Violet appeared in the hall just as Grace was finishing up and Grace registered for the first time that she was dressed. Had she been sitting up waiting for Gilbert to come home? Grace waited for some adverse reaction to the wet stain on the stair carpet and the lingering smell. Although if Violet really wanted to get upset about a stair carpet and a smell, she might like to pop round to Grace’s flat.
Violet didn’t say anything; she seemed to be listening to Tate upstairs. He was talking to Gilbert, saying, ‘OK now, that’s it, yup, better out than in,’ which Grace took to mean Gilbert was throwing up again and Tate was holding the bowl.
‘He’s had too much to drink, hasn’t he?’ Violet said. ‘My father used to do that. He’ll hiccup for a while and then go to sleep. Tomorrow he will be very quiet.’
Grace thought about Gilbert’s ‘Highlights of the Renaissance Tour’ the next day and wondered if Alistair would have to do it. Then Violet wrong-footed her completely.
‘When Gilbert is asleep, you may bring Tate down. He must sit with his feet on the paper and … if he could remain silent. I … I do feel fairly anxious about his lip.’
Grace nodded but did not understand Violet’s expression. It suggested that she was not particularly sorry about his lip but was occupied with some other idea that she wasn’t sharing and which was making her do that horrible agitating thing with her hands.
*
He had lovely manners. Stayed silent to begin with and then simply said, ‘Ma’am,’ and tilted his head when she talked as if he was really listening to her. Very neat with his tea. Hair needed a good cut, however, and a severe brush. It had been quite amusing when she asked if he’d prefer coffee and he’d said, ‘No, when in Rome.’ He wasn’t meant to talk, but by then she had got used to him and hadn’t minded. Grace had given him an awfully strict look and that had been quite amusing too.
He would do. After all, how many real live Americans did she have passing through the house these days? Any days? It had taken her a while to pluck up the courage, but when she asked him he told her like a shot: ‘Rhode Island, ma’am,’ he’d replied. She had left him in the sitting room while she went to fetch the right scrapbook.
He was looking at it now, saying such complimentary things. Telling her bits of extra information she didn’t know.
She realised she hadn’t said sorry about his lip. It was somewhat swollen. She offered him more tea instead. And really, it was his own fault. It would teach him not to talk through letterboxes.
*
Grace was not sure who had got the worst deal. She was wrapped in a blanket on a chair while Gilbert took in squeaky breaths and snorted them out again. Tate was downstairs with Violet, being force-fed tea and shown her scrapbook on Rhode Island.
Well, it had been Rhode Island when Grace had returned upstairs to watch over Gilbert, but Violet might have moved on by now.
She hoped so.
The thought of Tate sitting downstairs bored out of his mind but unable to show it made her smile. Although she should give him points for playing a blinder with Violet. Who knew he could sit still and not yabber on so much, or be quite so deferential in the way he treated her? He got the tone exactly right. Grace shifted around in the chair to relieve the numbness spreading up one thigh. She remembered how Tate had been all ‘ma’am’ and polite with Felicity too. Must have taken a lot of self-control not to shrink back into the sofa when Violet advanced on him with that dustpan and brush, though. All she’d spotted was a nervous covering of his lip with his hand.
She was smiling again, but this time it seemed more like a sign of support and so she scotched it abruptly.
Yes, he obviously did have some manners hidden away in there. Bill wouldn’t have been so polite. Never was. Not till the fag end of it all.
Grace looked around the bedroom. Framed prints of a couple of Titian’s religious paintings; a shelf of hardback art books. A teak table with more art books. Drab walls, drab curtains, hideous bedcover. Like an old man’s bedroom, or even a monastic cell. Poor Gilbert, where would he have been living if his mother hadn’t died just when she had? Would Tony and he have lived in a flat? She saw him in a modern flat, with nice sleek pieces of furniture, his Titian prints next to Tony’s Rothko ones.
She shifted again. Would Mark be in Kazakhstan already? She was too tired to work it out. More to the point, would she have liked him to have cut short his visit to his friends and rushed to her when he heard about the robbery? To have moved heaven and earth to see her before he left? She guessed if she had to think about that, as if answering a quiz, the answer must be no.
Gilbert was still rhythmically pulling in air and then snoring it out again. Would he be safe to leave yet? She could barely keep her eyes open. It wasn’t physically possible that he had anything left in his stomach to bring up, not unless he was manufacturing the stuff in there somewhere.
She closed her eyes and opened them again to check on him. Still snoring.
If she didn’t get up now, she’d fall asleep. But was it fair to leave Violet alone with Tate? Or did she mean Tate with Violet?
She heard a door open downstairs and the sound of Tate and Violet talking, their voices getting louder as if they were coming out into the hall. Violet was actually giggling.
‘Goodnight,’ Violet said and Grace heard footsteps on the stairs, the paper crinkling. The footsteps were too light to be Tate’s and, sure enough, Violet soon appeared in the bedroom doorway.
‘How is he?’ she said, looking with distaste at Gilbert.
‘Stabilised, I think, Violet.’ Grace stood up slowly, her legs feeling stiff. ‘I should probably head off now, leave you with him.’
Violet stepped
back as if that thought physically hurt her. ‘Leave me with him?’ she said. ‘No, I’m afraid not, Grace. I can’t cope with anybody being ill. I mean, can you imagine if he woke up and instead of just doing that dreadful hiccupping he was actually sick?’
Grace did not have to imagine it; she could have drawn Violet some quite spectacular pictures from recent memory.
Violet was shaking her head particularly vehemently for someone who was meant to be delicate. ‘Oh no, I need to go to bed if I’m to be strong enough to deal with him tomorrow.’
Grace tried not to look put out. ‘Well, OK. You know best … but perhaps I could ask Tate to take over? I’ve got work tomorrow first thing and he hasn’t so—’
‘Dear me, no. No. No. No.’ Violet was shaking her head and flapping her hands and Grace wasn’t sure whether she was building up to something more unpleasant.
‘No?’
‘No.’ Violet brought her hands together with a clap. ‘I cannot be left alone with a strange man.’
‘He’s not strange … well, he’s … I’m sure he’ll be fine, Violet. You’ve had a good chat with him downstairs, haven’t you? And his manners … he has nice manners.’
Violet was obviously not listening and Grace did not like the way she was starting to claw at her own hands. ‘It’s all right, Violet,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll stay and keep an eye on Gilbert. I can go straight to work from here. You get some rest.’
Violet nodded, said a stiff, ‘Goodnight, Gilbert,’ and left. Grace sat back down and listened to her moving along the landing to the bathroom and then to her own bedroom. But she was also listening out for Tate, hoping that he was putting on his coat and getting ready to leave. What was it Violet had said? I cannot be left alone with a strange man. She was beginning to feel fairly jittery herself about that prospect. So jittery that she jumped when she heard footsteps on the stairs again, heavier this time, doing more damage to the poor paper.
Tate appeared in the doorway. He had his coat on.
‘Just off?’ she said.
‘Off?’ He came into the room and she nodded at his coat.
‘No, come to take over with Gilb. You can head home. You’ll get a couple hours’ sleep if you’re lucky. Think Vi will mind that I just turned the central heating back on?’
Playing Grace Page 24